CHAPTER 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!"