"It was very dark on the quarter deck of the Ferndale between the deep
bulwarks overshadowed by the break of the poop and frowned upon by the
front of the warehouse. I plumped down on to my chest near the after
hatch as if my legs had been jerked from under me. I felt suddenly very
tired and languid. The ship-keeper, whom I could hardly make out hung
over the capstan in a fit of weak pitiful coughing. He gasped out very
low 'Oh! dear! Oh! dear!' and struggled for breath so long that I got up
alarmed and irresolute.
"I've been took like this since last Christmas twelvemonth. It ain't
nothing."
"He seemed a hundred years old at least. I never saw him properly
because he was gone ashore and out of sight when I came on deck in the
morning; but he gave me the notion of the feeblest creature that ever
breathed. His voice was thin like the buzzing of a mosquito. As it
would have been cruel to demand assistance from such a shadowy wreck I
went to work myself, dragging my chest along a pitch-black passage under
the poop deck, while he sighed and moaned around me as if my exertions
were more than his weakness could stand. At last as I banged pretty
heavily against the bulkheads he warned me in his faint breathless wheeze
to be more careful.
"What's the matter?" I asked rather roughly, not relishing to be
admonished by this forlorn broken-down ghost.
"Nothing! Nothing, sir," he protested so hastily that he lost his poor
breath again and I felt sorry for him. "Only the captain and his missus
are sleeping on board. She's a lady that mustn't be disturbed. They
came about half-past eight, and we had a permit to have lights in the
cabin till ten to-night."
"This struck me as a considerable piece of news. I had never been in a
ship where the captain had his wife with him. I'd heard fellows say that
captains' wives could work a lot of mischief on board ship if they
happened to take a dislike to anyone; especially the new wives if young
and pretty. The old and experienced wives on the other hand fancied they
knew more about the ship than the skipper himself and had an eye like a
hawk's for what went on. They were like an extra chief mate of a
particularly sharp and unfeeling sort who made his report in the evening.
The best of them were a nuisance. In the general opinion a skipper with
his wife on board was more difficult to please; but whether to show off
his authority before an admiring female or from loving anxiety for her
safety or simply from irritation at her presence--nobody I ever heard on
the subject could tell for certain.