Chapter 45.00: CHAPTER 43. Hark!

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CHAPTER 43. Hark!
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“HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”

It was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a
cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the
scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to
fill the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed
precincts of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle
their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence,
only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the
unceasingly advancing keel.

It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon, whose
post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a Cholo, the
words above.

“Hist! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”

“Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? What noise d’ye mean?”

“There it is again—under the hatches—don’t you hear it—a
cough—it sounded like a cough.”

“Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket.”

“There again—there it is! —it sounds like two or three sleepers
turning over, now!”

“Caramba! Have done, shipmate, will ye? It’s the three soaked biscuits ye
eat for supper turning over inside of ye—nothing else. Look to the
bucket!”

“Say what ye will, shipmate; I’ve sharp ears.”

“Aye, you are the chap, ain’t ye, that heard the hum of the old
Quakeress’s knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket; you’re the
chap.”

“Grin away; we’ll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is somebody
down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck; and I suspect
our old Mogul knows something of it too. I heard Stubb tell Flask, one
morning watch, that there was something of that sort in the wind.”

“Tish! The bucket!”