A little man lying in one of the upper bunks had spoken suddenly, contracting his sallow face into a curious spasm, as if the words had burst from him in spite of an effort to keep them in.
Everybody looked up at him angrily.
“That goddam kike Eisenstein,” muttered someone.
“Say, tie that bull outside,” shouted Bill Grey good-naturedly.
“Fools,” muttered Eisenstein, turning over and burying his face in his hands.
“Gee, I wonder what it is makes it smell so funny down here,” said Fuselli.
Fuselli lay flat on deck resting his head on his crossed arms. When he looked straight up he could see a lead-colored mast sweep back and forth across the sky full of clouds of light grey and silver and dark purplish-grey showing yellowish at the edges. When he tilted his head a little to one side he could see Bill Grey's heavy colorless face and the dark bristles of his unshaven chin and his mouth a little twisted to the left, from which a cigarette dangled unlighted. Beyond were heads and bodies huddled together in a mass of khaki overcoats and life preservers. And when the roll tipped the deck he had a view of moving green waves and of a steamer striped grey and white, and the horizon, a dark taut line, broken here and there by the tops of waves.
“O God, I feel sick,” said Bill Grey, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and looking at it revengefully.
“I'd be all right if everything didn't stink so. An' that mess hall. Nearly makes a guy puke to think of it.” Fuselli spoke in a whining voice, watching the top of the mast move like a pencil scrawling on paper, back and forth across the mottled clouds.
“You belly-achin' again?” A brown moon-shaped face with thick black eyebrows and hair curling crisply about a forehead with many horizontal wrinkles rose from the deck on the other side of Fuselli.
“Get the hell out of here.”
“Feel sick, sonny?” came the deep voice again, and the dark eyebrows contracted in an expression of sympathy. “Funny, I'd have my sixshooter out if I was home and you told me to get the
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