Hark!
"HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?
It was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were
standing in a cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water
butts in the waist, to the scuttle-butt near the taffrail.
In this manner, they passed the buckets to fill the scuttle-butt.
Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts of the
quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet.
From hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence,
only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the steady
hum of the unceasingly advancing keel.
It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon,
whose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor,
a Cholo, the words above.
"Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?"
"Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d'ye mean?"
"There it is again--under the hatches--don't you hear it--a cough--
it sounded like a cough."
"Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket."
"There again--there it is!--it sounds like two or three sleepers
turning over, now!"
"Caramba! have done, shipmate, will ye? It's the three soaked
biscuits ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye--nothing else.
Look to the bucket!"
"Say what ye will, shipmate; I've sharp ears."
"Aye, you are the chap, ain't ye, that heard the hum of the old
Quakeress's knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket;
you're the chap."
"Grin away; we'll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is
somebody down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck;
and I suspect our old Mogul knows something of it too.
I heard Stubb tell Flask, one morning watch, that there was
something of that sort in the wind."
"Tish! the bucket!"
