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 freshwater butts in the waist, to the scuttlebutt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to fill the scuttlebutt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts of the quarterdeck, 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!”