Chapter 43: 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!"