One night in the tropics I was "farmer" in the middle watch that is, I had neither "wheel" nor "look out" to stand during the four hours I stayed on deck. We were running down the North-east Trades, and the ship was sailing her-self, and the wind was gentle, and it was very still on board, the blocks whining as she rolled, and the waves talking, and the wheel-chains clanking, and a light noise aloft of pattering and tapping. The sea was all pale with moonlight, and from the lamproom door, where the watch was mustered, I could see a red stain on the water from the port sidelight. The mate was walking the weather side of the poop, while the boatswain sat on the booby-hatch humming an old tune and making a sheath for his knife. The watch were lying on the deck, out of the moonlight, in the shadow of the break of the poop. Most of them were sleeping, propped against the bulkhead.
One of them was singing a new chanty he had made, beating out the tune with his pipe-stem, in a little quiet voice that fitted the silence of the night.
Ha ! ha ! Why don't you blow ?
Oho!
Come, roll him over, repeated over and over again, as though he could never tire of the beauty of the words and the tune.