"Good night, Jack," broke in the cowpuncher softly. "I guess I'll quit. You're one too many for me; you have me beat to a stan'still. My head'll burst if I accoomilates any more astronomy. It takes up too much space in my brain-cells an' don' settle down none, but jest rampages 'round stampedin' my intellec's out into the cold, till I wonders, has I a headpiece at all or has it blowed off like a rawcket?" This broke up the astronomy party, and the three rolled into their blankets; but Curly, when he was turned out at one bell, complained of a dream in which the devil, with a face of variegated colours, had been grinning at him through Saturn's rings, whilst the grim shades of ghost stars pranced before him in all manner of fantastic shapes, headed by the monstrous fiery apparition of Sirius, whose flames, spread out in great tentacles--a twisty, creepy, crawly mass of claw-ended arms--sought to drag the terrified dreamer out of his blankets. FOOTNOTES: [7] It is now known that these figures _re_ Sirius are much overstated. CHAPTER X "STUDPOKER BOB'S MALADY" Like most wooden ships, the _Higgins_ had to be pumped out twice a day, once in the morning watch and once in the second dog-watch. A ship's pumps are worked by handle-bars on heavy flywheels, and it is probably the finest exercise in the world for your back muscles, especially if you have a bucko like Black Davis to watch over you and keep you doing sixty revolutions to the minute for half an hour without a spell. The bosun was not such a keen muscle-developer, and in consequence the starboard watch only averaged thirty-five to forty revolutions a minute, and also had a spell-ho after fifteen minutes. Notwithstanding this, Studpoker Bob, who had a horror of any sort of form of muscle-developing, used to let his arms go round with the brakes, and so managed that, instead of his arms pulling the brakes, the brakes pulled his arms. This man was fast beginning to show up in his true colours. As Broncho observed to Jack: "That ere kyard-sharp don't surge back on a rope suffeecient to throw a calf. He's shore regyardful of his health that-away; yet he's a-distributin' views in the foc's'le like as if he's the most put-upon gent in the ship, which same views is shore fomentin' trouble." "The man's a real waster," replied the rover. "I watched him dealing a brace game last night against Hank, Ben, and those two tenderfoots, Jimmy Green and Pinto. I believe he's got notes for most of the men's paydays already, and now, as you say, he's trying in a sneaky, underhand way to rake up trouble; but sailors always will walk blindly into the ditch, and won't be warned." "Which his mood is shore ornery an' he's plumb wolf by nacher; but as you-alls sagely remyarks, them misguided shorthorns won't believe it none, an' listens to his howlin' like he's the President of the United States. It has me plumb wearied," and Broncho sniffed disdainfully as he slowly filled his favourite corncob.