In this grim room the five pirates
sang and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up
their glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their
tobacco-pipes. Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices
hoarser, the curses and shoutings more incoherent, until three of the
five had closed their blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads
upon the table.
Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the
watchful steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without
came the low lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor's
chanty from the barque. In the windless tropical night the words came
clearly to their ears:--
A trader sailed from Stepney Town,
Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!
A trader sailed from Stepney Town
With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
Waiting with his yard aback
Out upon the Lowland Sea.
The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from
the shot-rack behind him.
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