It was easy to
recognize his profile a long way off because of the peculiar shape of the
nose. The remark itself is of little importance, of course; but a story is
made up of things that seem to be of little importance, yet really are more
significant by far than matters that for the moment are startling.
It was touching to see the solicitude of the men and the clumsy kindness of
their efforts to help poor Bill when the captain and the mate had left him.
They crowded up to his bunk and smoothed out his blankets and spoke to him
more gently than I should have believed possible. So angry were they at the
brutality of the two officers, that the coldest and hardest of them all
gave the sick man a muttered word of sympathy or an awkward helping hand.
We worked over him, easing him as best we could, while the bell struck the
half hours and the hours; and for a while he seemed more comfortable. In a
moment of sanity he looked up at me with a sad smile and said, "I wish,
lad, I surely wish I could do something for _you_." But long before the
watch was over he once more began to talk about the tiny wee girl at
Newburyport--"Cute she is as they make 'em," he reiterated weakly,
"a-waiting for her dad to come home.
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