The Beach of Dreams

n their bunks, snoring, all but Harbutt and Raft seated on

t was a long succession of fo'c'sles, bar-rooms, blazing suns, storms and sea happenings so run together that all sequence was lost. Beyond them lay a dismal blotch, his childhood. He had entered the world and

oon-juice. On these occasions a saloon bar with its glitter and phantom show of mirth and prosperity sometimes called on him to disp

hem curse and turn on the other side, and as he talked his voice made part of that procession of noises inseparable from the fo'c'sle of a ship under sail agai

owners, and ships is owners as far as

lot of cheap sugar, served it out to save the m'lasses. It was lea

pened to

Bombay, after the busines

as that?" as

it was a good bit bac

you, any dog's trick played on a sailorman's the truth, you c

s you were?

t them to join this b-y business, but it's the same ashore, owners

was only in drink that Pelagon rose in him. Harbutt was an atom of the new voice that is heard everywhere now, even in fo'c's

ent on Raft with the persistence o

when a chap's down he's down, the chaps that has money tramples on the chap

"I don't even rem

ever been i

right enough, but mos

ivin' in carriages, that's the sort that keeps us

ut he could not see how the chaps in plug hats kept other people down; the few he had seen had always seemed to him

killing the

'," replied Harbutt. "It's not them

e and turned in also and the fo'c'sle was given over to th

t soul-killing rock of kerosene filled it, intensifying, after the fashion of ambergris, all the other perfumes, without losing in power. Bilge, tobacco and humanity, you cannot know what these things are till they are married with the reek of kerosene, with the grunts and snores of weary men, with