It was nothing new.

Always a blow was to be expected from blacks when white men were not around.

Both the mate and the captain were on deck, and Jerry, though unafraid, continued his investigations cautiously.
But at the doorless entrance to the lazarette aft, he threw caution to the winds and darted in in pursuit of the new scent that came to his nostrils.

A strange person was in the low, dark space whom he had never smelled.

Clad in a single shift and lying on a coarse grass-mat spread upon a pile of tobacco cases and fifty-pound tins of flour, was a young black girl.
There was something furtive and lurking about her that Jerry did not fail to sense, and he had long since learned that something was wrong when any black lurked or skulked.