They talked for a little while about this gentleman. It was ten o'clock before they quitted the deck. A man struck four bells on the forecastle. Immediately a figure arose from the deep shadow cast by the deck-house on the planks, and went aft to relieve the helm. Captain Glew stood on the yacht's quarter, and was as visible in the moonshine as though the bright dawn had broken. There was a muttering about the course at the helm, and then the man who had been relieved took a step or two forward, looking at the captain. 'What are you staring at?' said Glew. The man, continuing to walk but slowly, persisted in staring, so that his head revolved. 'What are you staring at?' repeated Glew, in a soft but threatening voice. The skylight and companion-way were wide open; he had no wish that his note of temper should penetrate. 'Mayn't a man use his eyesight aboard this bloody ship?' said the seaman, coming to a halt. 'Go forward!' exclaimed the captain, stiffening himself at the rail. The man seemed to hesitate, then went slowly towards the forecastle, audibly muttering. This man's name was Joseph Dabb. When he was close to the deck-house, a sailor, who was squatting in the shadow of it, exclaimed gruffly: 'What was he a-saying of?' 'Asked me what I was a-staring at because I was looking at him.' 'S'elp me, all angels!' exclaimed the squatting figure, after spitting right across the deck, 'if I don't feel sometimes like cutting the scab's heart out of him! We're not men in _his_ sight. We're muck. He thinks of us as muck, and he talks of us as muck. He speaks to us as if we was muck, and it's muck he's shipped aboard this vessel for us muck to eat.' He stood up, and the whites of his eyes glistened in the reflected moonlight that whitened off the edges of the stay-foresail, as he turned his gaze aft, where the figure of the captain walked. A man came out of the deck-house and joined the company. Immediately after, a fourth man approached from the forecastle, and stood listening. 'They've been a-yarning about us half my trick,' said Dabb. 'The captain said this pleasuring was a-spoiling of us.' All four united in a low, dismal laugh, which would have been a loud, defiant, mirthless roar but for the sleepers in the deck-house, hard by which they were talking. Sleep is counted a sacred thing at sea. 'Ay,' exclaimed one of the men, who proved to be Mike Scott, 'you lay a man's going to be spoilt by the pleasuring that's to be done under _him_. What was said, Joe?' 'That blarsted Dutchman talks in his beard. That and his pipe smothered up his voice. I couldn't hear him. T'other was more clear. He spoke of sailors as had scuttled their ships, as had broke the cap'n's heart by ruinating his voyage, and made a widder of his wife by sending him adrift. T'other speaks, and then the cap'n says, "What's a sailor's love like?"' Silence followed.