"'Ere's a bloomin' pretty general average," said Joe, as he found his chest, which was also his chum's, staved in by the impact of an iron-bound one which had fetched away from its lashings. But no one growled, and no one answered him. The young second "greaser" had been liked by them. They sat and smoked in gloomy silence, and only half of the watch below turned into the driest bunks. They thought that the _Pandora_ had begun, and though she lay to easily enough, few slept. They were afraid of their ship; she was unlucky, accursed, an evil personality. About her was the odour of death. "Case was a good boy," they said, "and would have been a fine officer by-and-by. Well, our turn next." Every time the _Pandora_ bowed a wave the hawse-holes still spurted; the foc'sle deck ran wet and glimmered darkly in the feeble light from the stinking lanterns swinging on both port and starboard sides. The air was saturated with moisture, rank sweat ran down the beams, dripping blankets swayed from the edges of unoccupied bunks; the men were damp, subdued, unhappy. Now, as the ship lay to, the wind no longer swept into the foc'sle under the flapping screen by the windlass, but still eddies of swift cold air shook it, and the men shivered under their oilskins, that they wore now for warmth. "I wish I'd never seed her," said Jack Marchmont, and Joe did not answer his mate. Not ten words were spoken till the wheel and look-out were relieved at four o'clock. Both were idle jobs, for the night was still as dark as death, and the wheel with a grummet over its spokes looked after itself. "Oh, it's all solid comfort, this is," said Jack. "I wonder whose wet clothes will be for sale next?" They buried the second mate in the grey waste of sea before they put the _Pandora_ before the moderating gale. The mate read the burial service, for Captain Rayner stayed below. The steward told the men in a whisper that he was ill. "He's all broke up," he said, "I seed him cryin' like a child. And no wonder; this is a wicked ship. I wish I'd left her in Melbourne." And some of the men frowned. They did not like to hear him call the _Pandora_ wicked. For the ship was, in its way, alive; it was possessed. They wished to propitiate it; superstition had them by the throat.