Your name is Wait. What of that? What do you want? What do you mean, coming shouting here?’The nigger was calm, cool, towering, superb. The men had approached and stood behind him in a body. He overtopped the tallest by a half a head. He said: ‘I belong to the ship.’ He enunciated distinctly, with soft precision. The deep, rolling tones of his voice filled the deck without effort. He was naturally scornful, unaffectedly condescending, as if from his height of six foot three he had surveyed all the vastness of human folly and had made up his mind not to be too hard on it. He went on: -- The captain shipped me this morning. I couldn't get aboard sooner. I saw you all aft and I came up the ladder, and could see directly you were mustering the crew. Naturally I called out my name.
I thought you had it on your list, and would understand. You misapprehended.’He stopped short. The folly around him was confounded. He was right as ever, and as ever ready to forgive. The disdainful tones had ceased, and breathing heavily, he stood still, surrounded by all these white men. He held his head up in the glare of the lamp -- a head vigorously modelled into deep shadows and shining lights -- a head powerful and misshapen with a tormented and flattened face -- a face pathetic and brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask of a nigger's soul.
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Mr. Baker, recovering his composure, looked at the paper close. ‘Oh, yes; that's so. All right, Wait. Take your gear forward,’he said.
Suddenly the nigger's eyes rolled wildly, became all whites.
He put his hand to his side and coughed twice, a cough metallic, hollow, and tremendously loud; it resounded like two explosions in a vault; the dome of the sky rang to it, and the iron plates of the ship's bulwarks seemed to vibrate in unison; then he marched off forward with the others.
The officers lingering by the cabin door could hear him say:‘Won't some of you chaps lend a hand with my dunnage? I've got a chest and a bag.’The words, spoken sonorously, with an even intonation, were heard all over the ship, and the question was put in a manner that made refusal impossible.
The short, quick shuffle of men carrying something heavy went away forward, but the tall figure of the nigger lingered by the main hatch in a knot of smaller shapes. Again he was heard asking:‘Is your cook a coloured gentleman?’ Then a disappointed and disapproving ‘Ah!
h'm!’ was his comment upon the information that the cook happened to be a mere white man. Yet, as they went all together towards the forecastle, he condescended to put his head through the galley door and boom out inside a magnificent ‘Good evening, doctor!’ that made all the saucepans ring. In the dim light the cook dozed on the coal locker in front of the captain's supper. He jumped up as if he had been cut with a whip, and dashed wildly on deck to see the backs of several men going away laughing. Afterwards, when talking about that voyage, he used to say:
-- ‘The poor fellow had scared me. I thought I had seen the devil.’The cook had been seven years in the ship with the same captain. He was a serious-minded man with a wife and three children, whose society he enjoyed on an average one month out of twelve. When on shore he took his family to church twice every Sunday. At sea he went to sleep every evening with his lamp turned full up, a pipe in his mouth, and an open Bible in his hand. Some one had always to go during the night to put out the light, take the book from his hand, and the pipe from between his teeth. ‘For’-- Belfast used to say, irritated and complaining -- ‘some night, you stupid cookie, you'll swallow your ould clay, and we will have no cook.
-- ‘Ah! sonny, I am ready for my Maker's call....wish Page 14you all were.’ the other would answer with a benign serenity that was altogether imbecile and touching. Belfast outside the galley door danced with vexation. ‘You holy fool! I don't want you to die,’he howled, looking up with furious, quivering face and tender eyes. ‘What's the hurry? you blessed wooden-headed ould heretic, the divvle will have you soon enough. Think of Us....of Us....of Us!’ And he would go away, stamping, spitting aside, disgusted and worried; while the other, stepping out, saucepan in hand, hot, begrimed, and placid, watched with a superior, cock-sure smile the back of his ‘queer little man’reeling in a rage. They were great friends.
