Bab Bab 43 · Hark!

“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!”