"To-night when all are asleep, come to my cabin. I have something
to say to you."
The young man stared at him, roused by Blood's pregnant tone out
of the mental lethargy into which he had of late been lapsing as a
result of the dehumanizing life he lived. Then he nodded
understanding and assent, and they moved apart.
The six months of plantation life in Barbados had made an almost
tragic mark upon the young seaman. His erstwhile bright alertness
was all departed. His face was growing vacuous, his eyes were dull
and lack-lustre, and he moved in a cringing, furtive manner, like
an over-beaten dog. He had survived the ill-nourishment, the
excessive work on the sugar plantation under a pitiless sun, the
lashes of the overseer's whip when his labours flagged, and the
deadly, unrelieved animal life to which he was condemned. But the
price he was paying for survival was the usual price. He was in
danger of becoming no better than an animal, of sinking to the
level of the negroes who sometimes toiled beside him. The man,
however, was still there, not yet dormant, but merely torpid from
a surfeit of despair; and the man in him promptly shook off that
torpidity and awoke at the first words Blood spoke to him that
night - awoke and wept.
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