In the Roaring Fifties by Edward Dyson

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NEXT morning Done lingered below till the day was well advanced, but the darkness and the heavy atmosphere 'tween decks drove him into the open. It was a fair day, a big placid sun was shining, and the breeze followed them with a crisp suggestion of glittering ice-fields far down in the south. The sailors and passengers were grouped in small parties of six or seven, lounging about the deck in lazy abandonment, leaning over the side, smoking comfortably, and spitting with a certain dreamy satisfaction into the sweet, clean sea, or sitting in rings on improvised seats, alert, and loud in argument.

Jim's youthful face was even more than usually forbidding that morning as he stepped amongst the men to his favourite position on one of the guns. He feared an attempt to break through his reserve, some demonstration arising out of last night's adventure, that might be taken advantage of by the men to force their society and friendship upon him. He looked at none of the faces turned curiously in his direction, and his expression of stubborn enmity killed the cheer that sprang from a few of the forecastle passengers, and it tailed into a feeble absurdity. Leaning upon the old wooden gun-carriage, with his arms supporting his chin; he stared at the cleavage of the green sea and the swelling foam, feeling at his back all the time the cackle of criticism, like an irritation of the spinal marrow, chafing fretfully at this further proof of the failure of his long endeavour to school himself into complete indifference.

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