"Same old wagon, Jimmy. How are they treating you?"
"They's slowly killin' me, Axel, so help me Gawd, they is. Talk erbout yer rotters! Say, if you knowed as 'ow they does me along of some other poor Gawdfersooken fellers. Well, what ov it? They looses Jimmy afore long, that's wot they does."
"I'll bet they prays the liver out of him, and starves the little faker to boot," was Australia's opinion.
At about one bell, in the first watch, we had just got to the stage of half sleep, and were dropping off for our precious three and a quarter hours, when we were all sitting up as well as we could, in our bunks. Fred was terror stricken. "By —— It's Jimmy. I see him!"
"What in hell's bitin' you?" Australia demanded.
"Jimmy Marshall's in here! He spoke to me!"
"Spoke? Say, you big stiff, if you don't shut up I'll speak a few words you'll remember!" Australia was mad clean through. There was a silence. Something stirred over Australia's bunk, next to Fred's.
"Who's that?"
"Jimmy Marshall?" shouted the thoroughly frightened Fred, and then a voice near the top of the fo'c'sle, in the familiar tones of our late shipmate, very cracked and lifelike, added to the fear.
"Gawd have mercy. Gawd have mercy!" came the words.