[The other stories included in this volume ("Amy Foster, " "Falk: AReminiscence, " and "To-morrow") being already available in anothervolume, have not been entered here. ]

TYPHOON

BY JOSEPH CONRAD

Far as the mariner on highest mast Can see all around upon the calmedvast, So wide was Neptune's hall . . . -- KEATS

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The main characteristic of this volume consists in this, that all thestories composing it belong not only to the same period but have beenwritten one after another in the order in which they appear in the book. 

The period is that which follows on my connection with Blackwood'sMagazine. I had just finished writing "The End of the Tether" and wascasting about for some subject which could be developed in a shorterform than the tales in the volume of "Youth" when the instance of asteamship full of returning coolies from Singapore to some port innorthern China occurred to my recollection. Years before I had heardit being talked about in the East as a recent occurrence. It was for usmerely one subject of conversation amongst many others of the kind. Menearning their bread in any very specialized occupation will talk shop, not only because it is the most vital interest of their lives but alsobecause they have not much knowledge of other subjects. They have neverhad the time to get acquainted with them. Life, for most of us, is notso much a hard as an exacting taskmaster. 

I never met anybody personally concerned in this affair, the interest ofwhich for us was, of course, not the bad weather but the extraordinarycomplication brought into the ship's life at a moment of exceptionalstress by the human element below her deck. Neither was the story itselfever enlarged upon in my hearing. In that company each of us couldimagine easily what the whole thing was like. The financial difficultyof it, presenting also a human problem, was solved by a mind much toosimple to be perplexed by anything in the world except men's idle talkfor which it was not adapted. 

From the first the mere anecdote, the mere statement I might say, thatsuch a thing had happened on the high seas, appeared to me a sufficientsubject for meditation. Yet it was but a bit of a sea yarn after all. Ifelt that to bring out its deeper significance which was quite apparentto me, something other, something more was required; a leading motivethat would harmonize all these violent noises, and a point of view thatwould put all that elemental fury into its proper place. 

What was needed of course was Captain MacWhirr. Directly I perceived himI could see that he was the man for the situation. I don't mean tosay that I ever saw Captain MacWhirr in the flesh, or had ever come incontact with his literal mind and his dauntless temperament. MacWhirr isnot an acquaintance of a few hours, or a few weeks, or a few months. Heis the product of twenty years of life. My own life. Conscious inventionhad little to do with him. If it is true that Captain MacWhirr neverwalked and breathed on this earth (which I find for my part extremelydifficult to believe) I can also assure my readers that he is perfectlyauthentic. I may venture to assert the same of every aspect of thestory, while I confess that the particular typhoon of the tale was not atyphoon of my actual experience. 

At its first appearance "Typhoon, " the story, was classed by somecritics as a deliberately intended storm-piece. Others picked outMacWhirr, in whom they perceived a definite symbolic intention. Neitherwas exclusively my intention. Both the typhoon and Captain MacWhirrpresented themselves to me as the necessities of the deep convictionwith which I approached the subject of the story. It was theiropportunity. It was also my opportunity; and it would be vain todiscourse about what I made of it in a handful of pages, since the pagesthemselves are here, between the covers of this volume, to speak forthemselves. 

This is a belated reflection. If it had occurred to me before it wouldhave perhaps done away with the existence of this Author's Note; for, indeed, the same remark applies to every story in this volume. Noneof them are stories of experience in the absolute sense of the word. Experience in them is but the canvas of the attempted picture. Each ofthem has its more than one intention. With each the question is what thewriter has done with his opportunity; and each answers the question foritself in words which, if I may say so without undue solemnity, werewritten with a conscientious regard for the truth of my own sensations. And each of those stories, to mean something, must justify itself in itsown way to the conscience of each successive reader. 

"Falk"--the second story in the volume--offended the delicacy of onecritic at least by certain peculiarities of its subject. But what is thesubject of "Falk"? I personally do not feel so very certain about it. Hewho reads must find out for himself. My intention in writing "Falk"was not to shock anybody. As in most of my writings I insist not onthe events but on their effect upon the persons in the tale. But ineverything I have written there is always one invariable intention, andthat is to capture the reader's attention, by securing his interest andenlisting his sympathies for the matter in hand, whatever it may be, within the limits of the visible world and within the boundaries ofhuman emotions. 

I may safely say that Falk is absolutely true to my experience ofcertain straightforward characters combining a perfectly naturalruthlessness with a certain amount of moral delicacy. Falk obeys the lawof self-preservation without the slightest misgivings as to his right, but at a crucial turn of that ruthlessly preserved life he will notcondescend to dodge the truth. As he is presented as sensitive enough tobe affected permanently by a certain unusual experience, that experiencehad to be set by me before the reader vividly; but it is not the subjectof the tale. If we go by mere facts then the subject is Falk's attemptto get married; in which the narrator of the tale finds himselfunexpectedly involved both on its ruthless and its delicate side. 

"Falk" shares with one other of my stories ("The Return" in the "Talesof Unrest" volume) the distinction of never having been serialized. Ithink the copy was shown to the editor of some magazine who rejected itindignantly on the sole ground that "the girl never says anything. " Thisis perfectly true. From first to last Hermann's niece utters no word inthe tale--and it is not because she is dumb, but for the simple reasonthat whenever she happens to come under the observation of the narratorshe has either no occasion or is too profoundly moved to speak. Theeditor, who obviously had read the story, might have perceived that forhimself. Apparently he did not, and I refrained from pointing out theimpossibility to him because, since he did not venture to say that "thegirl" did not live, I felt no concern at his indignation. 

All the other stories were serialized. The "Typhoon" appeared in theearly numbers of the Pall Mall Magazine, then under the direction of thelate Mr. Halkett. It was on that occasion, too, that I saw for the firsttime my conceptions rendered by an artist in another medium. Mr. MauriceGrieffenhagen knew how to combine in his illustrations the effect of hisown most distinguished personal vision with an absolute fidelity to theinspiration of the writer. "Amy Foster" was published in The IllustratedLondon News with a fine drawing of Amy on her day out giving tea to thechildren at her home, in a hat with a big feather. "To-morrow" appearedfirst in the Pall Mall Magazine. Of that story I will only say thatit struck many people by its adaptability to the stage and that I wasinduced to dramatize it under the title of "One Day More"; up to thepresent my only effort in that direction. I may also add that each ofthe four stories on their appearance in book form was picked out onvarious grounds as the "best of the lot" by different critics, whoreviewed the volume with a warmth of appreciation and understanding, asympathetic insight and a friendliness of expression for which I cannotbe sufficiently grateful. 

1919. J. C. 

TYPHOON

I

Captain MacWhirr, of the steamer Nan-Shan, had a physiognomy that, inthe order of material appearances, was the exact counterpart of hismind: it presented no marked characteristics of firmness or stupidity;it had no pronounced characteristics whatever; it was simply ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled. 

The only thing his aspect might have been said to suggest, at times, wasbashfulness; because he would sit, in business offices ashore, sunburntand smiling faintly, with downcast eyes. When he raised them, they wereperceived to be direct in their glance and of blue colour. His hair wasfair and extremely fine, clasping from temple to temple the bald domeof his skull in a clamp as of fluffy silk. The hair of his face, on thecontrary, carroty and flaming, resembled a growth of copper wire clippedshort to the line of the lip; while, no matter how close he shaved, fiery metallic gleams passed, when he moved his head, over thesurface of his cheeks. He was rather below the medium height, a bitround-shouldered, and so sturdy of limb that his clothes always looked ashade too tight for his arms and legs. As if unable to grasp what is dueto the difference of latitudes, he wore a brown bowler hat, a completesuit of a brownish hue, and clumsy black boots. These harbour togs gaveto his thick figure an air of stiff and uncouth smartness. A thin silverwatch chain looped his waistcoat, and he never left his ship for theshore without clutching in his powerful, hairy fist an elegant umbrellaof the very best quality, but generally unrolled. Young Jukes, the chiefmate, attending his commander to the gangway, would sometimes ventureto say, with the greatest gentleness, "Allow me, sir"--and possessinghimself of the umbrella deferentially, would elevate the ferule, shakethe folds, twirl a neat furl in a jiffy, and hand it back; going throughthe performance with a face of such portentous gravity, that Mr. SolomonRout, the chief engineer, smoking his morning cigar over the skylight, would turn away his head in order to hide a smile. "Oh! aye! The blessedgamp. . . . Thank 'ee, Jukes, thank 'ee, " would mutter Captain MacWhirr, heartily, without looking up. 

Having just enough imagination to carry him through each successive day, and no more, he was tranquilly sure of himself; and from the very samecause he was not in the least conceited. It is your imaginative superiorwho is touchy, overbearing, and difficult to please; but every shipCaptain MacWhirr commanded was the floating abode of harmony and peace. It was, in truth, as impossible for him to take a flight of fancy asit would be for a watchmaker to put together a chronometer with nothingexcept a two-pound hammer and a whip-saw in the way of tools. Yet theuninteresting lives of men so entirely given to the actuality of thebare existence have their mysterious side. It was impossible in CaptainMacWhirr's case, for instance, to understand what under heaven couldhave induced that perfectly satisfactory son of a petty grocer inBelfast to run away to sea. And yet he had done that very thing at theage of fifteen. It was enough, when you thought it over, to give you theidea of an immense, potent, and invisible hand thrust into the ant-heapof the earth, laying hold of shoulders, knocking heads together, andsetting the unconscious faces of the multitude towards inconceivablegoals and in undreamt-of directions. 

His father never really forgave him for this undutiful stupidity. "Wecould have got on without him, " he used to say later on, "but there'sthe business. And he an only son, too!" His mother wept very much afterhis disappearance. As it had never occurred to him to leave word behind, he was mourned over for dead till, after eight months, his first letterarrived from Talcahuano. It was short, and contained the statement:"We had very fine weather on our passage out. " But evidently, in thewriter's mind, the only important intelligence was to the effect thathis captain had, on the very day of writing, entered him regularly onthe ship's articles as Ordinary Seaman. "Because I can do the work, " heexplained. The mother again wept copiously, while the remark, "Tom's anass, " expressed the emotions of the father. He was a corpulent man, witha gift for sly chaffing, which to the end of his life he exercisedin his intercourse with his son, a little pityingly, as if upon ahalf-witted person. 

MacWhirr's visits to his home were necessarily rare, and in the courseof years he despatched other letters to his parents, informing them ofhis successive promotions and of his movements upon the vast earth. Inthese missives could be found sentences like this: "The heat here isvery great. " Or: "On Christmas day at 4 P. M. We fell in with someicebergs. " The old people ultimately became acquainted with a goodmany names of ships, and with the names of the skippers who commandedthem--with the names of Scots and English shipowners--with the namesof seas, oceans, straits, promontories--with outlandish names oflumber-ports, of rice-ports, of cotton-ports--with the names ofislands--with the name of their son's young woman. She was called Lucy. It did not suggest itself to him to mention whether he thought the namepretty. And then they died. 

The great day of MacWhirr's marriage came in due course, followingshortly upon the great day when he got his first command. 

All these events had taken place many years before the morning when, inthe chart-room of the steamer Nan-Shan, he stood confronted by thefall of a barometer he had no reason to distrust. The fall--taking intoaccount the excellence of the instrument, the time of the year, andthe ship's position on the terrestrial globe--was of a nature ominouslyprophetic; but the red face of the man betrayed no sort of inwarddisturbance. Omens were as nothing to him, and he was unable to discoverthe message of a prophecy till the fulfilment had brought it home to hisvery door. "That's a fall, and no mistake, " he thought. "There must besome uncommonly dirty weather knocking about. "

The Nan-Shan was on her way from the southward to the treaty port ofFu-chau, with some cargo in her lower holds, and two hundred Chinesecoolies returning to their village homes in the province of Fo-kien, after a few years of work in various tropical colonies. The morning wasfine, the oily sea heaved without a sparkle, and there was a queer whitemisty patch in the sky like a halo of the sun. The fore-deck, packedwith Chinamen, was full of sombre clothing, yellow faces, and pigtails, sprinkled over with a good many naked shoulders, for there was no wind, and the heat was close. The coolies lounged, talked, smoked, or staredover the rail; some, drawing water over the side, sluiced each other;a few slept on hatches, while several small parties of six sat on theirheels surrounding iron trays with plates of rice and tiny teacups; andevery single Celestial of them was carrying with him all he had in theworld--a wooden chest with a ringing lock and brass on the corners, containing the savings of his labours: some clothes of ceremony, sticks of incense, a little opium maybe, bits of nameless rubbish ofconventional value, and a small hoard of silver dollars, toiled for incoal lighters, won in gambling-houses or in petty trading, grubbed outof earth, sweated out in mines, on railway lines, in deadly jungle, under heavy burdens--amassed patiently, guarded with care, cherishedfiercely. 

A cross swell had set in from the direction of Formosa Channel about teno'clock, without disturbing these passengers much, because the Nan-Shan, with her flat bottom, rolling chocks on bilges, and great breadth ofbeam, had the reputation of an exceptionally steady ship in a sea-way. Mr. Jukes, in moments of expansion on shore, would proclaim loudlythat the "old girl was as good as she was pretty. " It would never haveoccurred to Captain MacWhirr to express his favourable opinion so loudor in terms so fanciful. 

She was a good ship, undoubtedly, and not old either. She had been builtin Dumbarton less than three years before, to the order of a firm ofmerchants in Siam--Messrs. Sigg and Son. When she lay afloat, finishedin every detail and ready to take up the work of her life, the builderscontemplated her with pride. 

"Sigg has asked us for a reliable skipper to take her out, " remarked oneof the partners; and the other, after reflecting for a while, said:"I think MacWhirr is ashore just at present. " "Is he? Then wire himat once. He's the very man, " declared the senior, without a moment'shesitation. 

Next morning MacWhirr stood before them unperturbed, having travelledfrom London by the midnight express after a sudden but undemonstrativeparting with his wife. She was the daughter of a superior couple who hadseen better days. 

"We had better be going together over the ship, Captain, " said thesenior partner; and the three men started to view the perfections of theNan-Shan from stem to stern, and from her keelson to the trucks of hertwo stumpy pole-masts. 

Captain MacWhirr had begun by taking off his coat, which he hung on theend of a steam windless embodying all the latest improvements. 

"My uncle wrote of you favourably by yesterday's mail to our goodfriends--Messrs. Sigg, you know--and doubtless they'll continue you outthere in command, " said the junior partner. "You'll be able to boast ofbeing in charge of the handiest boat of her size on the coast of China, Captain, " he added. 

"Have you? Thank 'ee, " mumbled vaguely MacWhirr, to whom the view ofa distant eventuality could appeal no more than the beauty of a widelandscape to a purblind tourist; and his eyes happening at the moment tobe at rest upon the lock of the cabin door, he walked up to it, full ofpurpose, and began to rattle the handle vigorously, while he observed, in his low, earnest voice, "You can't trust the workmen nowadays. Abrand-new lock, and it won't act at all. Stuck fast. See? See?"

As soon as they found themselves alone in their office across the yard:"You praised that fellow up to Sigg. What is it you see in him?" askedthe nephew, with faint contempt. 

"I admit he has nothing of your fancy skipper about him, if that's whatyou mean, " said the elder man, curtly. "Is the foreman of the joinerson the Nan-Shan outside? . . . Come in, Bates. How is it that you letTait's people put us off with a defective lock on the cabin door? TheCaptain could see directly he set eye on it. Have it replaced at once. The little straws, Bates . . . The little straws. . . . "

The lock was replaced accordingly, and a few days afterwards theNan-Shan steamed out to the East, without MacWhirr having offered anyfurther remark as to her fittings, or having been heard to utter asingle word hinting at pride in his ship, gratitude for his appointment, or satisfaction at his prospects. 

With a temperament neither loquacious nor taciturn he found very littleoccasion to talk. There were matters of duty, of course--directions, orders, and so on; but the past being to his mind done with, and thefuture not there yet, the more general actualities of the day requiredno comment--because facts can speak for themselves with overwhelmingprecision. 

Old Mr. Sigg liked a man of few words, and one that "you could be surewould not try to improve upon his instructions. " MacWhirr satisfyingthese requirements, was continued in command of the Nan-Shan, andapplied himself to the careful navigation of his ship in the China seas. She had come out on a British register, but after some time Messrs. Siggjudged it expedient to transfer her to the Siamese flag. 

At the news of the contemplated transfer Jukes grew restless, as ifunder a sense of personal affront. He went about grumbling to himself, and uttering short scornful laughs. "Fancy having a ridiculousNoah's Ark elephant in the ensign of one's ship, " he said once at theengine-room door. "Dash me if I can stand it: I'll throw up the billet. Don't it make you sick, Mr. Rout?" The chief engineer only cleared histhroat with the air of a man who knows the value of a good billet. 

The first morning the new flag floated over the stern of the Nan-ShanJukes stood looking at it bitterly from the bridge. He struggled withhis feelings for a while, and then remarked, "Queer flag for a man tosail under, sir. "

"What's the matter with the flag?" inquired Captain MacWhirr. "Seems allright to me. " And he walked across to the end of the bridge to have agood look. 

"Well, it looks queer to me, " burst out Jukes, greatly exasperated, andflung off the bridge. 

Captain MacWhirr was amazed at these manners. After a while he steppedquietly into the chart-room, and opened his International SignalCode-book at the plate where the flags of all the nations are correctlyfigured in gaudy rows. He ran his finger over them, and when he came toSiam he contemplated with great attention the red field and the whiteelephant. Nothing could be more simple; but to make sure he brought thebook out on the bridge for the purpose of comparing the coloured drawingwith the real thing at the flagstaff astern. When next Jukes, who wascarrying on the duty that day with a sort of suppressed fierceness, happened on the bridge, his commander observed:

"There's nothing amiss with that flag. "

"Isn't there?" mumbled Jukes, falling on his knees before a deck-lockerand jerking therefrom viciously a spare lead-line. 

"No. I looked up the book. Length twice the breadth and the elephantexactly in the middle. I thought the people ashore would know how tomake the local flag. Stands to reason. You were wrong, Jukes. . . . "

"Well, sir, " began Jukes, getting up excitedly, "all I can say--" Hefumbled for the end of the coil of line with trembling hands. 

"That's all right. " Captain MacWhirr soothed him, sitting heavily on alittle canvas folding-stool he greatly affected. "All you have to do isto take care they don't hoist the elephant upside-down before they getquite used to it. "

Jukes flung the new lead-line over on the fore-deck with a loud "Hereyou are, bo'ss'en--don't forget to wet it thoroughly, " and turned withimmense resolution towards his commander; but Captain MacWhirr spreadhis elbows on the bridge-rail comfortably. 

"Because it would be, I suppose, understood as a signal of distress, " hewent on. "What do you think? That elephant there, I take it, stands forsomething in the nature of the Union Jack in the flag. . . . "

"Does it!" yelled Jukes, so that every head on the Nan-Shan's deckslooked towards the bridge. Then he sighed, and with sudden resignation:"It would certainly be a dam' distressful sight, " he said, meekly. 

Later in the day he accosted the chief engineer with a confidential, "Here, let me tell you the old man's latest. "

Mr. Solomon Rout (frequently alluded to as Long Sol, Old Sol, or FatherRout), from finding himself almost invariably the tallest man on boardevery ship he joined, had acquired the habit of a stooping, leisurelycondescension. His hair was scant and sandy, his flat cheeks were pale, his bony wrists and long scholarly hands were pale, too, as though hehad lived all his life in the shade. 

He smiled from on high at Jukes, and went on smoking and glancing aboutquietly, in the manner of a kind uncle lending an ear to the tale of anexcited schoolboy. Then, greatly amused but impassive, he asked:

"And did you throw up the billet?"

"No, " cried Jukes, raising a weary, discouraged voice above the harshbuzz of the Nan-Shan's friction winches. All of them were hard at work, snatching slings of cargo, high up, to the end of long derricks, only, as it seemed, to let them rip down recklessly by the run. The cargochains groaned in the gins, clinked on coamings, rattled over theside; and the whole ship quivered, with her long gray flanks smoking inwreaths of steam. "No, " cried Jukes, "I didn't. What's the good? I mightjust as well fling my resignation at this bulkhead. I don't believe youcan make a man like that understand anything. He simply knocks me over. "

At that moment Captain MacWhirr, back from the shore, crossed the deck, umbrella in hand, escorted by a mournful, self-possessed Chinaman, walking behind in paper-soled silk shoes, and who also carried anumbrella. 

The master of the Nan-Shan, speaking just audibly and gazing at hisboots as his manner was, remarked that it would be necessary to callat Fu-chau this trip, and desired Mr. Rout to have steam up to-morrowafternoon at one o'clock sharp. He pushed back his hat to wipe hisforehead, observing at the same time that he hated going ashoreanyhow; while overtopping him Mr. Rout, without deigning a word, smokedausterely, nursing his right elbow in the palm of his left hand. Then Jukes was directed in the same subdued voice to keep the forward'tween-deck clear of cargo. Two hundred coolies were going to be putdown there. The Bun Hin Company were sending that lot home. Twenty-fivebags of rice would be coming off in a sampan directly, for stores. Allseven-years'-men they were, said Captain MacWhirr, with a camphor-woodchest to every man. The carpenter should be set to work nailingthree-inch battens along the deck below, fore and aft, to keep theseboxes from shifting in a sea-way. Jukes had better look to it at once. "D'ye hear, Jukes?" This chinaman here was coming with the ship as faras Fu-chau--a sort of interpreter he would be. Bun Hin's clerk hewas, and wanted to have a look at the space. Jukes had better take himforward. "D'ye hear, Jukes?"

Jukes took care to punctuate these instructions in proper places withthe obligatory "Yes, sir, " ejaculated without enthusiasm. His brusque"Come along, John; make look see" set the Chinaman in motion at hisheels. 

"Wanchee look see, all same look see can do, " said Jukes, who having notalent for foreign languages mangled the very pidgin-English cruelly. Hepointed at the open hatch. "Catchee number one piecie place to sleep in. Eh?"

He was gruff, as became his racial superiority, but not unfriendly. TheChinaman, gazing sad and speechless into the darkness of the hatchway, seemed to stand at the head of a yawning grave. 

"No catchee rain down there--savee?" pointed out Jukes. "Suppose all'eesame fine weather, one piecie coolie-man come topside, " he pursued, warming up imaginatively. "Make so--Phooooo!" He expanded his chest andblew out his cheeks. "Savee, John? Breathe--fresh air. Good. Eh? Washeehim piecie pants, chow-chow top-side--see, John?"

With his mouth and hands he made exuberant motions of eating rice andwashing clothes; and the Chinaman, who concealed his distrust of thispantomime under a collected demeanour tinged by a gentle and refinedmelancholy, glanced out of his almond eyes from Jukes to the hatch andback again. "Velly good, " he murmured, in a disconsolate undertone, andhastened smoothly along the decks, dodging obstacles in his course. Hedisappeared, ducking low under a sling of ten dirty gunny-bags full ofsome costly merchandise and exhaling a repulsive smell. 

Captain MacWhirr meantime had gone on the bridge, and into thechart-room, where a letter, commenced two days before, awaitedtermination. These long letters began with the words, "My darling wife, "and the steward, between the scrubbing of the floors and the dustingof chronometer-boxes, snatched at every opportunity to read them. Theyinterested him much more than they possibly could the woman for whoseeye they were intended; and this for the reason that they related inminute detail each successive trip of the Nan-Shan. 

Her master, faithful to facts, which alone his consciousness reflected, would set them down with painstaking care upon many pages. The housein a northern suburb to which these pages were addressed had a bit ofgarden before the bow-windows, a deep porch of good appearance, coloured glass with imitation lead frame in the front door. He paidfive-and-forty pounds a year for it, and did not think the rent toohigh, because Mrs. MacWhirr (a pretentious person with a scraggyneck and a disdainful manner) was admittedly ladylike, and in theneighbourhood considered as "quite superior. " The only secret of herlife was her abject terror of the time when her husband would come hometo stay for good. Under the same roof there dwelt also a daughter calledLydia and a son, Tom. These two were but slightly acquainted with theirfather. Mainly, they knew him as a rare but privileged visitor, who ofan evening smoked his pipe in the dining-room and slept in the house. The lanky girl, upon the whole, was rather ashamed of him; the boywas frankly and utterly indifferent in a straightforward, delightful, unaffected way manly boys have. 

And Captain MacWhirr wrote home from the coast of China twelve timesevery year, desiring quaintly to be "remembered to the children, " andsubscribing himself "your loving husband, " as calmly as if the words solong used by so many men were, apart from their shape, worn-out things, and of a faded meaning. 

The China seas north and south are narrow seas. They are seas full ofevery-day, eloquent facts, such as islands, sand-banks, reefs, swift andchangeable currents--tangled facts that nevertheless speak to a seamanin clear and definite language. Their speech appealed to CaptainMacWhirr's sense of realities so forcibly that he had given up hisstate-room below and practically lived all his days on the bridge ofhis ship, often having his meals sent up, and sleeping at night in thechart-room. And he indited there his home letters. Each of them, withoutexception, contained the phrase, "The weather has been very fine thistrip, " or some other form of a statement to that effect. And thisstatement, too, in its wonderful persistence, was of the same perfectaccuracy as all the others they contained. 

Mr. Rout likewise wrote letters; only no one on board knew how chatty hecould be pen in hand, because the chief engineer had enough imaginationto keep his desk locked. His wife relished his style greatly. They werea childless couple, and Mrs. Rout, a big, high-bosomed, jolly woman offorty, shared with Mr. Rout's toothless and venerable mother a littlecottage near Teddington. She would run over her correspondence, atbreakfast, with lively eyes, and scream out interesting passages in ajoyous voice at the deaf old lady, prefacing each extract by thewarning shout, "Solomon says!" She had the trick of firing offSolomon's utterances also upon strangers, astonishing them easily by theunfamiliar text and the unexpectedly jocular vein of these quotations. On the day the new curate called for the first time at the cottage, shefound occasion to remark, "As Solomon says: 'the engineers that go downto the sea in ships behold the wonders of sailor nature';" when a changein the visitor's countenance made her stop and stare. 

"Solomon. . . . Oh! . . . Mrs. Rout, " stuttered the young man, very redin the face, "I must say . . . I don't. . . . "

"He's my husband, " she announced in a great shout, throwing herselfback in the chair. Perceiving the joke, she laughed immoderately with ahandkerchief to her eyes, while he sat wearing a forced smile, and, from his inexperience of jolly women, fully persuaded that she mustbe deplorably insane. They were excellent friends afterwards; for, absolving her from irreverent intention, he came to think she was avery worthy person indeed; and he learned in time to receive withoutflinching other scraps of Solomon's wisdom. 

"For my part, " Solomon was reported by his wife to have said once, "giveme the dullest ass for a skipper before a rogue. There is a way totake a fool; but a rogue is smart and slippery. " This was an airygeneralization drawn from the particular case of Captain MacWhirr'shonesty, which, in itself, had the heavy obviousness of a lump of clay. On the other hand, Mr. Jukes, unable to generalize, unmarried, andunengaged, was in the habit of opening his heart after another fashionto an old chum and former shipmate, actually serving as second officeron board an Atlantic liner. 

First of all he would insist upon the advantages of the Eastern trade, hinting at its superiority to the Western ocean service. He extolledthe sky, the seas, the ships, and the easy life of the Far East. TheNan-Shan, he affirmed, was second to none as a sea-boat. 

"We have no brass-bound uniforms, but then we are like brothers here, "he wrote. "We all mess together and live like fighting-cocks. . . . Allthe chaps of the black-squad are as decent as they make that kind, andold Sol, the Chief, is a dry stick. We are good friends. As to our oldman, you could not find a quieter skipper. Sometimes you would think hehadn't sense enough to see anything wrong. And yet it isn't that. Can'tbe. He has been in command for a good few years now. He doesn't doanything actually foolish, and gets his ship along all right withoutworrying anybody. I believe he hasn't brains enough to enjoy kickingup a row. I don't take advantage of him. I would scorn it. Outside theroutine of duty he doesn't seem to understand more than half of what youtell him. We get a laugh out of this at times; but it is dull, too, tobe with a man like this--in the long-run. Old Sol says he hasn't muchconversation. Conversation! O Lord! He never talks. The other day I hadbeen yarning under the bridge with one of the engineers, and he musthave heard us. When I came up to take my watch, he steps out of thechart-room and has a good look all round, peeps over at the sidelights, glances at the compass, squints upward at the stars. That's his regularperformance. By-and-by he says: 'Was that you talking just now in theport alleyway?' 'Yes, sir. ' 'With the third engineer?' 'Yes, sir. ' Hewalks off to starboard, and sits under the dodger on a little campstoolof his, and for half an hour perhaps he makes no sound, except that Iheard him sneeze once. Then after a while I hear him getting up overthere, and he strolls across to port, where I was. 'I can't understandwhat you can find to talk about, ' says he. 'Two solid hours. I am notblaming you. I see people ashore at it all day long, and then in theevening they sit down and keep at it over the drinks. Must be saying thesame things over and over again. I can't understand. '

"Did you ever hear anything like that? And he was so patient about it. It made me quite sorry for him. But he is exasperating, too, sometimes. Of course one would not do anything to vex him even if it were worthwhile. But it isn't. He's so jolly innocent that if you were to put yourthumb to your nose and wave your fingers at him he would only wondergravely to himself what got into you. He told me once quite simply thathe found it very difficult to make out what made people always act soqueerly. He's too dense to trouble about, and that's the truth. "

Thus wrote Mr. Jukes to his chum in the Western ocean trade, out of thefulness of his heart and the liveliness of his fancy. 

He had expressed his honest opinion. It was not worthwhile trying toimpress a man of that sort. If the world had been full of such men, lifewould have probably appeared to Jukes an unentertaining and unprofitablebusiness. He was not alone in his opinion. The sea itself, as if sharingMr. Jukes' good-natured forbearance, had never put itself out to startlethe silent man, who seldom looked up, and wandered innocently overthe waters with the only visible purpose of getting food, raiment, and house-room for three people ashore. Dirty weather he had known, ofcourse. He had been made wet, uncomfortable, tired in the usual way, felt at the time and presently forgotten. So that upon the whole he hadbeen justified in reporting fine weather at home. But he had never beengiven a glimpse of immeasurable strength and of immoderate wrath, thewrath that passes exhausted but never appeased--the wrath and furyof the passionate sea. He knew it existed, as we know that crime andabominations exist; he had heard of it as a peaceable citizen in a townhears of battles, famines, and floods, and yet knows nothing of whatthese things mean--though, indeed, he may have been mixed up in a streetrow, have gone without his dinner once, or been soaked to the skin ina shower. Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans assome men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently intoa placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having beenmade to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror. There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate--or thus disdained bydestiny or by the sea. 

II

Observing the steady fall of the barometer, Captain MacWhirr thought, "There's some dirty weather knocking about. " This is precisely what hethought. He had had an experience of moderately dirty weather--the termdirty as applied to the weather implying only moderate discomfort to theseaman. Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that theend of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophicdisturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the informationunder the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he hadno experience of cataclysms, and belief does not necessarily implycomprehension. The wisdom of his county had pronounced by means of anAct of Parliament that before he could be considered as fit to takecharge of a ship he should be able to answer certain simple questions onthe subject of circular storms such as hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons;and apparently he had answered them, since he was now in command of theNan-Shan in the China seas during the season of typhoons. But if hehad answered he remembered nothing of it. He was, however, conscious ofbeing made uncomfortable by the clammy heat. He came out on the bridge, and found no relief to this oppression. The air seemed thick. He gaspedlike a fish, and began to believe himself greatly out of sorts. 

The Nan-Shan was ploughing a vanishing furrow upon the circle of thesea that had the surface and the shimmer of an undulating piece ofgray silk. The sun, pale and without rays, poured down leaden heat in astrangely indecisive light, and the Chinamen were lying prostrate aboutthe decks. Their bloodless, pinched, yellow faces were like the facesof bilious invalids. Captain MacWhirr noticed two of them especially, stretched out on their backs below the bridge. As soon as they hadclosed their eyes they seemed dead. Three others, however, werequarrelling barbarously away forward; and one big fellow, half naked, with herculean shoulders, was hanging limply over a winch; another, sitting on the deck, his knees up and his head drooping sideways ina girlish attitude, was plaiting his pigtail with infinite languordepicted in his whole person and in the very movement of his fingers. The smoke struggled with difficulty out of the funnel, and insteadof streaming away spread itself out like an infernal sort of cloud, smelling of sulphur and raining soot all over the decks. 

"What the devil are you doing there, Mr. Jukes?" asked Captain MacWhirr. 

This unusual form of address, though mumbled rather than spoken, causedthe body of Mr. Jukes to start as though it had been prodded under thefifth rib. He had had a low bench brought on the bridge, and sitting onit, with a length of rope curled about his feet and a piece of canvasstretched over his knees, was pushing a sail-needle vigorously. Helooked up, and his surprise gave to his eyes an expression of innocenceand candour. 

"I am only roping some of that new set of bags we made last trip forwhipping up coals, " he remonstrated, gently. "We shall want them for thenext coaling, sir. "

"What became of the others?"

"Why, worn out of course, sir. "

Captain MacWhirr, after glaring down irresolutely at his chief mate, disclosed the gloomy and cynical conviction that more than half of themhad been lost overboard, "if only the truth was known, " and retiredto the other end of the bridge. Jukes, exasperated by this unprovokedattack, broke the needle at the second stitch, and dropping his work gotup and cursed the heat in a violent undertone. 

The propeller thumped, the three Chinamen forward had given upsquabbling very suddenly, and the one who had been plaiting his tailclasped his legs and stared dejectedly over his knees. The luridsunshine cast faint and sickly shadows. The swell ran higher and swifterevery moment, and the ship lurched heavily in the smooth, deep hollowsof the sea. 

"I wonder where that beastly swell comes from, " said Jukes aloud, recovering himself after a stagger. 

"North-east, " grunted the literal MacWhirr, from his side of the bridge. "There's some dirty weather knocking about. Go and look at the glass. "

When Jukes came out of the chart-room, the cast of his countenance hadchanged to thoughtfulness and concern. He caught hold of the bridge-railand stared ahead. 

The temperature in the engine-room had gone up to a hundred andseventeen degrees. Irritated voices were ascending through the skylightand through the fiddle of the stokehold in a harsh and resonant uproar, mingled with angry clangs and scrapes of metal, as if men with limbs ofiron and throats of bronze had been quarrelling down there. The secondengineer was falling foul of the stokers for letting the steam go down. He was a man with arms like a blacksmith, and generally feared; but thatafternoon the stokers were answering him back recklessly, and slammedthe furnace doors with the fury of despair. Then the noise ceasedsuddenly, and the second engineer appeared, emerging out of thestokehold streaked with grime and soaking wet like a chimney-sweepcoming out of a well. As soon as his head was clear of the fiddle hebegan to scold Jukes for not trimming properly the stokeholdventilators; and in answer Jukes made with his hands deprecatorysoothing signs meaning: "No wind--can't be helped--you can see foryourself. " But the other wouldn't hear reason. His teeth flashed angrilyin his dirty face. He didn't mind, he said, the trouble of punchingtheir blanked heads down there, blank his soul, but did the condemnedsailors think you could keep steam up in the God-forsaken boilers simplyby knocking the blanked stokers about? No, by George! You had to getsome draught, too--may he be everlastingly blanked for a swab-headeddeck-hand if you didn't! And the chief, too, rampaging before thesteam-gauge and carrying on like a lunatic up and down the engine-roomever since noon. What did Jukes think he was stuck up there for, if hecouldn't get one of his decayed, good-for-nothing deck-cripples to turnthe ventilators to the wind?

The relations of the "engine-room" and the "deck" of the Nan-Shan were, as is known, of a brotherly nature; therefore Jukes leaned over andbegged the other in a restrained tone not to make a disgusting ass ofhimself; the skipper was on the other side of the bridge. But the seconddeclared mutinously that he didn't care a rap who was on the other sideof the bridge, and Jukes, passing in a flash from lofty disapproval intoa state of exaltation, invited him in unflattering terms to come up andtwist the beastly things to please himself, and catch such wind as adonkey of his sort could find. The second rushed up to the fray. Heflung himself at the port ventilator as though he meant to tear it outbodily and toss it overboard. All he did was to move the cowl round afew inches, with an enormous expenditure of force, and seemed spentin the effort. He leaned against the back of the wheelhouse, and Jukeswalked up to him. 

"Oh, Heavens!" ejaculated the engineer in a feeble voice. He liftedhis eyes to the sky, and then let his glassy stare descend to meet thehorizon that, tilting up to an angle of forty degrees, seemed to hang ona slant for a while and settled down slowly. "Heavens! Phew! What's up, anyhow?"

Jukes, straddling his long legs like a pair of compasses, put on anair of superiority. "We're going to catch it this time, " he said. "Thebarometer is tumbling down like anything, Harry. And you trying to kickup that silly row. . . . "

The word "barometer" seemed to revive the second engineer's madanimosity. Collecting afresh all his energies, he directed Jukes in alow and brutal tone to shove the unmentionable instrument down hisgory throat. Who cared for his crimson barometer? It was the steam--thesteam--that was going down; and what between the firemen going faint andthe chief going silly, it was worse than a dog's life for him; he didn'tcare a tinker's curse how soon the whole show was blown out of thewater. He seemed on the point of having a cry, but after regaining hisbreath he muttered darkly, "I'll faint them, " and dashed off. He stoppedupon the fiddle long enough to shake his fist at the unnatural daylight, and dropped into the dark hole with a whoop. 

When Jukes turned, his eyes fell upon the rounded back and the big redears of Captain MacWhirr, who had come across. He did not look at hischief officer, but said at once, "That's a very violent man, that secondengineer. "

"Jolly good second, anyhow, " grunted Jukes. "They can't keep up steam, "he added, rapidly, and made a grab at the rail against the coming lurch. 

Captain MacWhirr, unprepared, took a run and brought himself up with ajerk by an awning stanchion. 

"A profane man, " he said, obstinately. "If this goes on, I'll have toget rid of him the first chance. "

"It's the heat, " said Jukes. "The weather's awful. It would make a saintswear. Even up here I feel exactly as if I had my head tied up in awoollen blanket. "

Captain MacWhirr looked up. "D'ye mean to say, Mr. Jukes, you ever hadyour head tied up in a blanket? What was that for?"

"It's a manner of speaking, sir, " said Jukes, stolidly. 

"Some of you fellows do go on! What's that about saints swearing? I wishyou wouldn't talk so wild. What sort of saint would that be that wouldswear? No more saint than yourself, I expect. And what's a blanket gotto do with it--or the weather either. . . . The heat does not make meswear--does it? It's filthy bad temper. That's what it is. And what'sthe good of your talking like this?"

Thus Captain MacWhirr expostulated against the use of images in speech, and at the end electrified Jukes by a contemptuous snort, followed bywords of passion and resentment: "Damme! I'll fire him out of the shipif he don't look out. "

And Jukes, incorrigible, thought: "Goodness me! Somebody's put a newinside to my old man. Here's temper, if you like. Of course it's theweather; what else? It would make an angel quarrelsome--let alone asaint. "

All the Chinamen on deck appeared at their last gasp. 

At its setting the sun had a diminished diameter and an expiring brown, rayless glow, as if millions of centuries elapsing since the morninghad brought it near its end. A dense bank of cloud became visible to thenorthward; it had a sinister dark olive tint, and lay low and motionlessupon the sea, resembling a solid obstacle in the path of the ship. Shewent floundering towards it like an exhausted creature driven to itsdeath. The coppery twilight retired slowly, and the darkness broughtout overhead a swarm of unsteady, big stars, that, as if blown upon, flickered exceedingly and seemed to hang very near the earth. At eighto'clock Jukes went into the chart-room to write up the ship's log. 

He copies neatly out of the rough-book the number of miles, the courseof the ship, and in the column for "wind" scrawled the word "calm" fromtop to bottom of the eight hours since noon. He was exasperated by thecontinuous, monotonous rolling of the ship. The heavy inkstand wouldslide away in a manner that suggested perverse intelligence in dodgingthe pen. Having written in the large space under the head of "Remarks""Heat very oppressive, " he stuck the end of the penholder in his teeth, pipe fashion, and mopped his face carefully. 

"Ship rolling heavily in a high cross swell, " he began again, andcommented to himself, "Heavily is no word for it. " Then he wrote:"Sunset threatening, with a low bank of clouds to N. And E. Sky clearoverhead. "

Sprawling over the table with arrested pen, he glanced out of the door, and in that frame of his vision he saw all the stars flying upwardsbetween the teakwood jambs on a black sky. The whole lot took flighttogether and disappeared, leaving only a blackness flecked with whiteflashes, for the sea was as black as the sky and speckled with foamafar. The stars that had flown to the roll came back on the return swingof the ship, rushing downwards in their glittering multitude, not offiery points, but enlarged to tiny discs brilliant with a clear wetsheen. 

Jukes watched the flying big stars for a moment, and then wrote: "8 P. M. Swell increasing. Ship labouring and taking water on her decks. Batteneddown the coolies for the night. Barometer still falling. " He paused, andthought to himself, "Perhaps nothing whatever'll come of it. " And thenhe closed resolutely his entries: "Every appearance of a typhoon comingon. "

On going out he had to stand aside, and Captain MacWhirr strode over thedoorstep without saying a word or making a sign. 

"Shut the door, Mr. Jukes, will you?" he cried from within. 

Jukes turned back to do so, muttering ironically: "Afraid to catch cold, I suppose. " It was his watch below, but he yearned for communion withhis kind; and he remarked cheerily to the second mate: "Doesn't look sobad, after all--does it?"

The second mate was marching to and fro on the bridge, tripping downwith small steps one moment, and the next climbing with difficulty theshifting slope of the deck. At the sound of Jukes' voice he stood still, facing forward, but made no reply. 

"Hallo! That's a heavy one, " said Jukes, swaying to meet the long rolltill his lowered hand touched the planks. This time the second mate madein his throat a noise of an unfriendly nature. 

He was an oldish, shabby little fellow, with bad teeth and no hair onhis face. He had been shipped in a hurry in Shanghai, that trip whenthe second officer brought from home had delayed the ship three hoursin port by contriving (in some manner Captain MacWhirr could neverunderstand) to fall overboard into an empty coal-lighter lyingalongside, and had to be sent ashore to the hospital with concussion ofthe brain and a broken limb or two. 

Jukes was not discouraged by the unsympathetic sound. "The Chinamen mustbe having a lovely time of it down there, " he said. "It's lucky for themthe old girl has the easiest roll of any ship I've ever been in. Therenow! This one wasn't so bad. "

"You wait, " snarled the second mate. 

With his sharp nose, red at the tip, and his thin pinched lips, healways looked as though he were raging inwardly; and he was concise inhis speech to the point of rudeness. All his time off duty he spentin his cabin with the door shut, keeping so still in there that he wassupposed to fall asleep as soon as he had disappeared; but the man whocame in to wake him for his watch on deck would invariably find him withhis eyes wide open, flat on his back in the bunk, and glaring irritablyfrom a soiled pillow. He never wrote any letters, did not seem to hopefor news from anywhere; and though he had been heard once to mentionWest Hartlepool, it was with extreme bitterness, and only in connectionwith the extortionate charges of a boarding-house. He was one of thosemen who are picked up at need in the ports of the world. They arecompetent enough, appear hopelessly hard up, show no evidence of anysort of vice, and carry about them all the signs of manifest failure. They come aboard on an emergency, care for no ship afloat, live in theirown atmosphere of casual connection amongst their shipmates who knownothing of them, and make up their minds to leave at inconvenient times. They clear out with no words of leavetaking in some God-forsaken portother men would fear to be stranded in, and go ashore in company of ashabby sea-chest, corded like a treasure-box, and with an air of shakingthe ship's dust off their feet. 

"You wait, " he repeated, balanced in great swings with his back toJukes, motionless and implacable. 

"Do you mean to say we are going to catch it hot?" asked Jukes withboyish interest. 

"Say? . . . I say nothing. You don't catch me, " snapped the littlesecond mate, with a mixture of pride, scorn, and cunning, as if Jukes'question had been a trap cleverly detected. "Oh, no! None of you hereshall make a fool of me if I know it, " he mumbled to himself. 

Jukes reflected rapidly that this second mate was a mean little beast, and in his heart he wished poor Jack Allen had never smashed himself upin the coal-lighter. The far-off blackness ahead of the ship was likeanother night seen through the starry night of the earth--the starlessnight of the immensities beyond the created universe, revealed in itsappalling stillness through a low fissure in the glittering sphere ofwhich the earth is the kernel. 

"Whatever there might be about, " said Jukes, "we are steaming straightinto it. "

"You've said it, " caught up the second mate, always with his back toJukes. "You've said it, mind--not I. "

"Oh, go to Jericho!" said Jukes, frankly; and the other emitted atriumphant little chuckle. 

"You've said it, " he repeated. 

"And what of that?"

"I've known some real good men get into trouble with their skippers forsaying a dam' sight less, " answered the second mate feverishly. "Oh, no!You don't catch me. "

"You seem deucedly anxious not to give yourself away, " said Jukes, completely soured by such absurdity. "I wouldn't be afraid to say what Ithink. "

"Aye, to me! That's no great trick. I am nobody, and well I know it. "

The ship, after a pause of comparative steadiness, started upon a seriesof rolls, one worse than the other, and for a time Jukes, preservinghis equilibrium, was too busy to open his mouth. As soon as the violentswinging had quieted down somewhat, he said: "This is a bit too much ofa good thing. Whether anything is coming or not I think she ought to beput head on to that swell. The old man is just gone in to lie down. Hangme if I don't speak to him. "

But when he opened the door of the chart-room he saw his captain readinga book. Captain MacWhirr was not lying down: he was standing up withone hand grasping the edge of the bookshelf and the other holding openbefore his face a thick volume. The lamp wriggled in the gimbals, the loosened books toppled from side to side on the shelf, the longbarometer swung in jerky circles, the table altered its slant everymoment. In the midst of all this stir and movement Captain MacWhirr, holding on, showed his eyes above the upper edge, and asked, "What's thematter?"

"Swell getting worse, sir. "

"Noticed that in here, " muttered Captain MacWhirr. "Anything wrong?"

Jukes, inwardly disconcerted by the seriousness of the eyes looking athim over the top of the book, produced an embarrassed grin. 

"Rolling like old boots, " he said, sheepishly. 

"Aye! Very heavy--very heavy. What do you want?"

At this Jukes lost his footing and began to flounder. "I was thinking ofour passengers, " he said, in the manner of a man clutching at a straw. 

"Passengers?" wondered the Captain, gravely. "What passengers?"

"Why, the Chinamen, sir, " explained Jukes, very sick of thisconversation. 

"The Chinamen! Why don't you speak plainly? Couldn't tell what youmeant. Never heard a lot of coolies spoken of as passengers before. Passengers, indeed! What's come to you?"

Captain MacWhirr, closing the book on his forefinger, lowered his armand looked completely mystified. "Why are you thinking of the Chinamen, Mr. Jukes?" he inquired. 

Jukes took a plunge, like a man driven to it. "She's rolling her decksfull of water, sir. Thought you might put her head on perhaps--for awhile. Till this goes down a bit--very soon, I dare say. Head to theeastward. I never knew a ship roll like this. "

He held on in the doorway, and Captain MacWhirr, feeling his grip onthe shelf inadequate, made up his mind to let go in a hurry, and fellheavily on the couch. 

"Head to the eastward?" he said, struggling to sit up. "That's more thanfour points off her course. "

"Yes, sir. Fifty degrees. . . . Would just bring her head far enoughround to meet this. . . . "

Captain MacWhirr was now sitting up. He had not dropped the book, and hehad not lost his place. 

"To the eastward?" he repeated, with dawning astonishment. "To the . . . Where do you think we are bound to? You want me to haul a full-poweredsteamship four points off her course to make the Chinamen comfortable!Now, I've heard more than enough of mad things done in the world--butthis. . . . If I didn't know you, Jukes, I would think you were inliquor. Steer four points off. . . . And what afterwards? Steer fourpoints over the other way, I suppose, to make the course good. What putit into your head that I would start to tack a steamer as if she were asailing-ship?"

"Jolly good thing she isn't, " threw in Jukes, with bitter readiness. "She would have rolled every blessed stick out of her this afternoon. "

"Aye! And you just would have had to stand and see them go, " saidCaptain MacWhirr, showing a certain animation. "It's a dead calm, isn'tit?"

"It is, sir. But there's something out of the common coming, for sure. "

"Maybe. I suppose you have a notion I should be getting out of theway of that dirt, " said Captain MacWhirr, speaking with the utmostsimplicity of manner and tone, and fixing the oilcloth on the floorwith a heavy stare. Thus he noticed neither Jukes' discomfiture nor themixture of vexation and astonished respect on his face. 

"Now, here's this book, " he continued with deliberation, slapping histhigh with the closed volume. "I've been reading the chapter on thestorms there. "

This was true. He had been reading the chapter on the storms. When hehad entered the chart-room, it was with no intention of taking the bookdown. Some influence in the air--the same influence, probably, thatcaused the steward to bring without orders the Captain's sea-boots andoilskin coat up to the chart-room--had as it were guided his hand tothe shelf; and without taking the time to sit down he had waded with aconscious effort into the terminology of the subject. He lost himselfamongst advancing semi-circles, left- and right-hand quadrants, thecurves of the tracks, the probable bearing of the centre, the shifts ofwind and the readings of barometer. He tried to bring all thesethings into a definite relation to himself, and ended by becomingcontemptuously angry with such a lot of words, and with so much advice, all head-work and supposition, without a glimmer of certitude. 

"It's the damnedest thing, Jukes, " he said. "If a fellow was to believeall that's in there, he would be running most of his time all over thesea trying to get behind the weather. "

Again he slapped his leg with the book; and Jukes opened his mouth, butsaid nothing. 

"Running to get behind the weather! Do you understand that, Mr. Jukes?It's the maddest thing!" ejaculated Captain MacWhirr, with pauses, gazing at the floor profoundly. "You would think an old woman had beenwriting this. It passes me. If that thing means anything useful, thenit means that I should at once alter the course away, away to the devilsomewhere, and come booming down on Fu-chau from the northward at thetail of this dirty weather that's supposed to be knocking about in ourway. From the north! Do you understand, Mr. Jukes? Three hundred extramiles to the distance, and a pretty coal bill to show. I couldn't bringmyself to do that if every word in there was gospel truth, Mr. Jukes. Don't you expect me. . . . "

And Jukes, silent, marvelled at this display of feeling and loquacity. 

"But the truth is that you don't know if the fellow is right, anyhow. How can you tell what a gale is made of till you get it? He isn't aboardhere, is he? Very well. Here he says that the centre of them thingsbears eight points off the wind; but we haven't got any wind, for allthe barometer falling. Where's his centre now?"

"We will get the wind presently, " mumbled Jukes. 

"Let it come, then, " said Captain MacWhirr, with dignified indignation. "It's only to let you see, Mr. Jukes, that you don't find everything inbooks. All these rules for dodging breezes and circumventing the windsof heaven, Mr. Jukes, seem to me the maddest thing, when you come tolook at it sensibly. "

He raised his eyes, saw Jukes gazing at him dubiously, and tried toillustrate his meaning. 

"About as queer as your extraordinary notion of dodging the ship headto sea, for I don't know how long, to make the Chinamen comfortable;whereas all we've got to do is to take them to Fu-chau, being timed toget there before noon on Friday. If the weather delays me--very well. There's your log-book to talk straight about the weather. But supposeI went swinging off my course and came in two days late, and they askedme: 'Where have you been all that time, Captain?' What could I say tothat? 'Went around to dodge the bad weather, ' I would say. 'It must'vebeen dam' bad, ' they would say. 'Don't know, ' I would have to say; 'I'vedodged clear of it. ' See that, Jukes? I have been thinking it all outthis afternoon. "

He looked up again in his unseeing, unimaginative way. No one had everheard him say so much at one time. Jukes, with his arms open in thedoorway, was like a man invited to behold a miracle. Unbounded wonderwas the intellectual meaning of his eye, while incredulity was seated inhis whole countenance. 

"A gale is a gale, Mr. Jukes, " resumed the Captain, "and a full-poweredsteam-ship has got to face it. There's just so much dirty weatherknocking about the world, and the proper thing is to go through it withnone of what old Captain Wilson of the Melita calls 'storm strategy. 'The other day ashore I heard him hold forth about it to a lot ofshipmasters who came in and sat at a table next to mine. It seemed to methe greatest nonsense. He was telling them how he outmanoeuvred, Ithink he said, a terrific gale, so that it never came nearer than fiftymiles to him. A neat piece of head-work he called it. How he knew therewas a terrific gale fifty miles off beats me altogether. It was likelistening to a crazy man. I would have thought Captain Wilson was oldenough to know better. "

Captain MacWhirr ceased for a moment, then said, "It's your watch below, Mr. Jukes?"

Jukes came to himself with a start. "Yes, sir. "

"Leave orders to call me at the slightest change, " said the Captain. He reached up to put the book away, and tucked his legs upon the couch. "Shut the door so that it don't fly open, will you? I can't stand adoor banging. They've put a lot of rubbishy locks into this ship, I mustsay. "

Captain MacWhirr closed his eyes. 

He did so to rest himself. He was tired, and he experienced that stateof mental vacuity which comes at the end of an exhaustive discussionthat has liberated some belief matured in the course of meditativeyears. He had indeed been making his confession of faith, had he onlyknown it; and its effect was to make Jukes, on the other side of thedoor, stand scratching his head for a good while. 

Captain MacWhirr opened his eyes. 

He thought he must have been asleep. What was that loud noise? Wind? Whyhad he not been called? The lamp wriggled in its gimbals, the barometerswung in circles, the table altered its slant every moment; a pair oflimp sea-boots with collapsed tops went sliding past the couch. He putout his hand instantly, and captured one. 

Jukes' face appeared in a crack of the door: only his face, very red, with staring eyes. The flame of the lamp leaped, a piece of paper flewup, a rush of air enveloped Captain MacWhirr. Beginning to draw on theboot, he directed an expectant gaze at Jukes' swollen, excited features. 

"Came on like this, " shouted Jukes, "five minutes ago . . . All of asudden. "

The head disappeared with a bang, and a heavy splash and patter of dropsswept past the closed door as if a pailful of melted lead had beenflung against the house. A whistling could be heard now upon thedeep vibrating noise outside. The stuffy chart-room seemed as full ofdraughts as a shed. Captain MacWhirr collared the other sea-boot on itsviolent passage along the floor. He was not flustered, but he could notfind at once the opening for inserting his foot. The shoes he had flungoff were scurrying from end to end of the cabin, gambolling playfullyover each other like puppies. As soon as he stood up he kicked at themviciously, but without effect. 

He threw himself into the attitude of a lunging fencer, to reach afterhis oilskin coat; and afterwards he staggered all over the confinedspace while he jerked himself into it. Very grave, straddling his legsfar apart, and stretching his neck, he started to tie deliberatelythe strings of his sou'-wester under his chin, with thick fingers thattrembled slightly. He went through all the movements of a woman puttingon her bonnet before a glass, with a strained, listening attention, asthough he had expected every moment to hear the shout of his name in theconfused clamour that had suddenly beset his ship. Its increase filledhis ears while he was getting ready to go out and confront whatever itmight mean. It was tumultuous and very loud--made up of the rush of thewind, the crashes of the sea, with that prolonged deep vibration of theair, like the roll of an immense and remote drum beating the charge ofthe gale. 

He stood for a moment in the light of the lamp, thick, clumsy, shapelessin his panoply of combat, vigilant and red-faced. 

"There's a lot of weight in this, " he muttered. 

As soon as he attempted to open the door the wind caught it. Clingingto the handle, he was dragged out over the doorstep, and at once foundhimself engaged with the wind in a sort of personal scuffle whoseobject was the shutting of that door. At the last moment a tongue of airscurried in and licked out the flame of the lamp. 

Ahead of the ship he perceived a great darkness lying upon a multitudeof white flashes; on the starboard beam a few amazing stars drooped, dimand fitful, above an immense waste of broken seas, as if seen through amad drift of smoke. 

On the bridge a knot of men, indistinct and toiling, were making greatefforts in the light of the wheelhouse windows that shone mistily ontheir heads and backs. Suddenly darkness closed upon one pane, then onanother. The voices of the lost group reached him after the manner ofmen's voices in a gale, in shreds and fragments of forlorn shoutingsnatched past the ear. All at once Jukes appeared at his side, yelling, with his head down. 

"Watch--put in--wheelhouse shutters--glass--afraid--blow in. "

Jukes heard his commander upbraiding. 

"This--come--anything--warning--call me. "

He tried to explain, with the uproar pressing on his lips. 

"Light air--remained--bridge--sudden--north-east--couldturn--thought--you--sure--hear. "

They had gained the shelter of the weather-cloth, and could conversewith raised voices, as people quarrel. 

"I got the hands along to cover up all the ventilators. Good job I hadremained on deck. I didn't think you would be asleep, and so . . . Whatdid you say, sir? What?"

"Nothing, " cried Captain MacWhirr. "I said--all right. "

"By all the powers! We've got it this time, " observed Jukes in a howl. 

"You haven't altered her course?" inquired Captain MacWhirr, straininghis voice. 

"No, sir. Certainly not. Wind came out right ahead. And here comes thehead sea. "

A plunge of the ship ended in a shock as if she had landed her forefootupon something solid. After a moment of stillness a lofty flight ofsprays drove hard with the wind upon their faces. 

"Keep her at it as long as we can, " shouted Captain MacWhirr. 

Before Jukes had squeezed the salt water out of his eyes all the starshad disappeared. 

III

Jukes was as ready a man as any half-dozen young mates that may becaught by casting a net upon the waters; and though he had been somewhattaken aback by the startling viciousness of the first squall, he hadpulled himself together on the instant, had called out the hands and hadrushed them along to secure such openings about the deck as had not beenalready battened down earlier in the evening. Shouting in his fresh, stentorian voice, "Jump, boys, and bear a hand!" he led in the work, telling himself the while that he had "just expected this. "

But at the same time he was growing aware that this was rather more thanhe had expected. From the first stir of the air felt on his cheek thegale seemed to take upon itself the accumulated impetus of an avalanche. Heavy sprays enveloped the Nan-Shan from stem to stern, and instantly inthe midst of her regular rolling she began to jerk and plunge as thoughshe had gone mad with fright. 

Jukes thought, "This is no joke. " While he was exchanging explanatoryyells with his captain, a sudden lowering of the darkness came upon thenight, falling before their vision like something palpable. It was asif the masked lights of the world had been turned down. Jukes wasuncritically glad to have his captain at hand. It relieved him as thoughthat man had, by simply coming on deck, taken most of the gale's weightupon his shoulders. Such is the prestige, the privilege, and the burdenof command. 

Captain MacWhirr could expect no relief of that sort from any one onearth. Such is the loneliness of command. He was trying to see, withthat watchful manner of a seaman who stares into the wind's eye as ifinto the eye of an adversary, to penetrate the hidden intention andguess the aim and force of the thrust. The strong wind swept at him outof a vast obscurity; he felt under his feet the uneasiness of his ship, and he could not even discern the shadow of her shape. He wished itwere not so; and very still he waited, feeling stricken by a blind man'shelplessness. 

To be silent was natural to him, dark or shine. Jukes, at his elbow, made himself heard yelling cheerily in the gusts, "We must have gotthe worst of it at once, sir. " A faint burst of lightning quivered allround, as if flashed into a cavern--into a black and secret chamber ofthe sea, with a floor of foaming crests. 

It unveiled for a sinister, fluttering moment a ragged mass of cloudshanging low, the lurch of the long outlines of the ship, the blackfigures of men caught on the bridge, heads forward, as if petrified inthe act of butting. The darkness palpitated down upon all this, and thenthe real thing came at last. 

It was something formidable and swift, like the sudden smashing ofa vial of wrath. It seemed to explode all round the ship with anoverpowering concussion and a rush of great waters, as if an immense damhad been blown up to windward. In an instant the men lost touch of eachother. This is the disintegrating power of a great wind: it isolates onefrom one's kind. An earthquake, a landslip, an avalanche, overtake a manincidentally, as it were--without passion. A furious gale attacks himlike a personal enemy, tries to grasp his limbs, fastens upon his mind, seeks to rout his very spirit out of him. 

Jukes was driven away from his commander. He fancied himself whirled agreat distance through the air. Everything disappeared--even, fora moment, his power of thinking; but his hand had found one ofthe rail-stanchions. His distress was by no means alleviated by aninclination to disbelieve the reality of this experience. Though young, he had seen some bad weather, and had never doubted his ability toimagine the worst; but this was so much beyond his powers of fancy thatit appeared incompatible with the existence of any ship whatever. Hewould have been incredulous about himself in the same way, perhaps, hadhe not been so harassed by the necessity of exerting a wrestling effortagainst a force trying to tear him away from his hold. Moreover, theconviction of not being utterly destroyed returned to him through thesensations of being half-drowned, bestially shaken, and partly choked. 

It seemed to him he remained there precariously alone with the stanchionfor a long, long time. The rain poured on him, flowed, drove in sheets. He breathed in gasps; and sometimes the water he swallowed was fresh andsometimes it was salt. For the most part he kept his eyes shut tight, asif suspecting his sight might be destroyed in the immense flurry ofthe elements. When he ventured to blink hastily, he derived some moralsupport from the green gleam of the starboard light shining feebly uponthe flight of rain and sprays. He was actually looking at it when itsray fell upon the uprearing sea which put it out. He saw the head of thewave topple over, adding the mite of its crash to the tremendous uproarraging around him, and almost at the same instant the stanchion waswrenched away from his embracing arms. After a crushing thump on hisback he found himself suddenly afloat and borne upwards. His firstirresistible notion was that the whole China Sea had climbed on thebridge. Then, more sanely, he concluded himself gone overboard. All thetime he was being tossed, flung, and rolled in great volumes of water, he kept on repeating mentally, with the utmost precipitation, the words:"My God! My God! My God! My God!"

All at once, in a revolt of misery and despair, he formed the crazyresolution to get out of that. And he began to thresh about with hisarms and legs. But as soon as he commenced his wretched struggles hediscovered that he had become somehow mixed up with a face, an oilskincoat, somebody's boots. He clawed ferociously all these things inturn, lost them, found them again, lost them once more, and finally washimself caught in the firm clasp of a pair of stout arms. He returnedthe embrace closely round a thick solid body. He had found his captain. 

They tumbled over and over, tightening their hug. Suddenly the waterlet them down with a brutal bang; and, stranded against the side of thewheelhouse, out of breath and bruised, they were left to stagger up inthe wind and hold on where they could. 

Jukes came out of it rather horrified, as though he had escaped someunparalleled outrage directed at his feelings. It weakened his faith inhimself. He started shouting aimlessly to the man he could feel near himin that fiendish blackness, "Is it you, sir? Is it you, sir?" till histemples seemed ready to burst. And he heard in answer a voice, as ifcrying far away, as if screaming to him fretfully from a very greatdistance, the one word "Yes!" Other seas swept again over the bridge. He received them defencelessly right over his bare head, with both hishands engaged in holding. 

The motion of the ship was extravagant. Her lurches had an appallinghelplessness: she pitched as if taking a header into a void, and seemedto find a wall to hit every time. When she rolled she fell on her sideheadlong, and she would be righted back by such a demolishing blow thatJukes felt her reeling as a clubbed man reels before he collapses. Thegale howled and scuffled about gigantically in the darkness, as thoughthe entire world were one black gully. At certain moments the airstreamed against the ship as if sucked through a tunnel with aconcentrated solid force of impact that seemed to lift her clean outof the water and keep her up for an instant with only a quiver runningthrough her from end to end. And then she would begin her tumbling againas if dropped back into a boiling cauldron. Jukes tried hard to composehis mind and judge things coolly. 

The sea, flattened down in the heavier gusts, would uprise and overwhelmboth ends of the Nan-Shan in snowy rushes of foam, expanding wide, beyond both rails, into the night. And on this dazzling sheet, spreadunder the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, CaptainMacWhirr could catch a desolate glimpse of a few tiny specks black asebony, the tops of the hatches, the battened companions, the heads ofthe covered winches, the foot of a mast. This was all he could see ofhis ship. Her middle structure, covered by the bridge which bore him, his mate, the closed wheelhouse where a man was steering shut up withthe fear of being swept overboard together with the whole thing in onegreat crash--her middle structure was like a half-tide rock awash upon acoast. It was like an outlying rock with the water boiling up, streamingover, pouring off, beating round--like a rock in the surf to whichshipwrecked people cling before they let go--only it rose, it sank, itrolled continuously, without respite and rest, like a rock that shouldhave miraculously struck adrift from a coast and gone wallowing upon thesea. 

The Nan-Shan was being looted by the storm with a senseless, destructivefury: trysails torn out of the extra gaskets, double-lashed awningsblown away, bridge swept clean, weather-cloths burst, rails twisted, light-screens smashed--and two of the boats had gone already. They hadgone unheard and unseen, melting, as it were, in the shock and smotherof the wave. It was only later, when upon the white flash of anotherhigh sea hurling itself amidships, Jukes had a vision of two pairs ofdavits leaping black and empty out of the solid blackness, with oneoverhauled fall flying and an iron-bound block capering in the air, thathe became aware of what had happened within about three yards of hisback. 

He poked his head forward, groping for the ear of his commander. Hislips touched it--big, fleshy, very wet. He cried in an agitated tone, "Our boats are going now, sir. "

And again he heard that voice, forced and ringing feebly, but with apenetrating effect of quietness in the enormous discord of noises, as ifsent out from some remote spot of peace beyond the black wastes of thegale; again he heard a man's voice--the frail and indomitable sound thatcan be made to carry an infinity of thought, resolution and purpose, that shall be pronouncing confident words on the last day, when heavensfall, and justice is done--again he heard it, and it was crying to him, as if from very, very far--"All right. "

He thought he had not managed to make himself understood. "Our boats--Isay boats--the boats, sir! Two gone!"

The same voice, within a foot of him and yet so remote, yelled sensibly, "Can't be helped. "

Captain MacWhirr had never turned his face, but Jukes caught some morewords on the wind. 

"What can--expect--when hammering through--such--Bound toleave--something behind--stands to reason. "

Watchfully Jukes listened for more. No more came. This was all CaptainMacWhirr had to say; and Jukes could picture to himself rather than seethe broad squat back before him. An impenetrable obscurity pressed downupon the ghostly glimmers of the sea. A dull conviction seized uponJukes that there was nothing to be done. 

If the steering-gear did not give way, if the immense volumes of waterdid not burst the deck in or smash one of the hatches, if the enginesdid not give up, if way could be kept on the ship against this terrificwind, and she did not bury herself in one of these awful seas, of whosewhite crests alone, topping high above her bows, he could now and thenget a sickening glimpse--then there was a chance of her coming out ofit. Something within him seemed to turn over, bringing uppermost thefeeling that the Nan-Shan was lost. 

"She's done for, " he said to himself, with a surprising mentalagitation, as though he had discovered an unexpected meaning in thisthought. One of these things was bound to happen. Nothing could beprevented now, and nothing could be remedied. The men on board did notcount, and the ship could not last. This weather was too impossible. 

Jukes felt an arm thrown heavily over his shoulders; and to thisoverture he responded with great intelligence by catching hold of hiscaptain round the waist. 

They stood clasped thus in the blind night, bracing each other againstthe wind, cheek to cheek and lip to ear, in the manner of two hulkslashed stem to stern together. 

And Jukes heard the voice of his commander hardly any louder thanbefore, but nearer, as though, starting to march athwart the prodigiousrush of the hurricane, it had approached him, bearing that strangeeffect of quietness like the serene glow of a halo. 

"D'ye know where the hands got to?" it asked, vigorous and evanescent atthe same time, overcoming the strength of the wind, and swept away fromJukes instantly. 

Jukes didn't know. They were all on the bridge when the real force ofthe hurricane struck the ship. He had no idea where they had crawled to. Under the circumstances they were nowhere, for all the use that could bemade of them. Somehow the Captain's wish to know distressed Jukes. 

"Want the hands, sir?" he cried, apprehensively. 

"Ought to know, " asserted Captain MacWhirr. "Hold hard. "

They held hard. An outburst of unchained fury, a vicious rush of thewind absolutely steadied the ship; she rocked only, quick and light likea child's cradle, for a terrific moment of suspense, while the wholeatmosphere, as it seemed, streamed furiously past her, roaring away fromthe tenebrous earth. 

It suffocated them, and with eyes shut they tightened their grasp. What from the magnitude of the shock might have been a column of waterrunning upright in the dark, butted against the ship, broke short, and fell on her bridge, crushingly, from on high, with a dead buryingweight. 

A flying fragment of that collapse, a mere splash, enveloped them in oneswirl from their feet over their heads, filling violently their ears, mouths and nostrils with salt water. It knocked out their legs, wrenchedin haste at their arms, seethed away swiftly under their chins; andopening their eyes, they saw the piled-up masses of foam dashing to andfro amongst what looked like the fragments of a ship. She had given wayas if driven straight in. Their panting hearts yielded, too, before thetremendous blow; and all at once she sprang up again to her desperateplunging, as if trying to scramble out from under the ruins. 

The seas in the dark seemed to rush from all sides to keep her backwhere she might perish. There was hate in the way she was handled, anda ferocity in the blows that fell. She was like a living creature thrownto the rage of a mob: hustled terribly, struck at, borne up, flungdown, leaped upon. Captain MacWhirr and Jukes kept hold of each other, deafened by the noise, gagged by the wind; and the great physicaltumult beating about their bodies, brought, like an unbridled displayof passion, a profound trouble to their souls. One of those wild andappalling shrieks that are heard at times passing mysteriously overheadin the steady roar of a hurricane, swooped, as if borne on wings, uponthe ship, and Jukes tried to outscream it. 

"Will she live through this?"

The cry was wrenched out of his breast. It was as unintentional as thebirth of a thought in the head, and he heard nothing of it himself. Itall became extinct at once--thought, intention, effort--and of his crythe inaudible vibration added to the tempest waves of the air. 

He expected nothing from it. Nothing at all. For indeed what answercould be made? But after a while he heard with amazement the frail andresisting voice in his ear, the dwarf sound, unconquered in the gianttumult. 

"She may!"

It was a dull yell, more difficult to seize than a whisper. Andpresently the voice returned again, half submerged in the vast crashes, like a ship battling against the waves of an ocean. 

"Let's hope so!" it cried--small, lonely and unmoved, a stranger tothe visions of hope or fear; and it flickered into disconnected words:"Ship. . . . . This. . . . Never--Anyhow . . . For the best. " Jukes gaveit up. 

Then, as if it had come suddenly upon the one thing fit to withstandthe power of a storm, it seemed to gain force and firmness for the lastbroken shouts:

"Keep on hammering . . . Builders . . . Good men. . . . . And chance it. . . Engines. . . . Rout . . . Good man. "

Captain MacWhirr removed his arm from Jukes' shoulders, and therebyceased to exist for his mate, so dark it was; Jukes, after a tensestiffening of every muscle, would let himself go limp all over. Thegnawing of profound discomfort existed side by side with an incredibledisposition to somnolence, as though he had been buffeted and worriedinto drowsiness. The wind would get hold of his head and try to shakeit off his shoulders; his clothes, full of water, were as heavy as lead, cold and dripping like an armour of melting ice: he shivered--it lasteda long time; and with his hands closed hard on his hold, he was lettinghimself sink slowly into the depths of bodily misery. His mind becameconcentrated upon himself in an aimless, idle way, and when somethingpushed lightly at the back of his knees he nearly, as the saying is, jumped out of his skin. 

In the start forward he bumped the back of Captain MacWhirr, who didn'tmove; and then a hand gripped his thigh. A lull had come, a menacinglull of the wind, the holding of a stormy breath--and he felt himselfpawed all over. It was the boatswain. Jukes recognized these hands, sothick and enormous that they seemed to belong to some new species ofman. 

The boatswain had arrived on the bridge, crawling on all fours againstthe wind, and had found the chief mate's legs with the top of his head. Immediately he crouched and began to explore Jukes' person upwards withprudent, apologetic touches, as became an inferior. 

He was an ill-favoured, undersized, gruff sailor of fifty, coarselyhairy, short-legged, long-armed, resembling an elderly ape. Hisstrength was immense; and in his great lumpy paws, bulging like brownboxing-gloves on the end of furry forearms, the heaviest objects werehandled like playthings. Apart from the grizzled pelt on his chest, themenacing demeanour and the hoarse voice, he had none of the classicalattributes of his rating. His good nature almost amounted to imbecility:the men did what they liked with him, and he had not an ounce ofinitiative in his character, which was easy-going and talkative. Forthese reasons Jukes disliked him; but Captain MacWhirr, to Jukes'scornful disgust, seemed to regard him as a first-rate petty officer. 

He pulled himself up by Jukes' coat, taking that liberty with thegreatest moderation, and only so far as it was forced upon him by thehurricane. 

"What is it, boss'n, what is it?" yelled Jukes, impatiently. What couldthat fraud of a boss'n want on the bridge? The typhoon had got on Jukes'nerves. The husky bellowings of the other, though unintelligible, seemedto suggest a state of lively satisfaction. 

There could be no mistake. The old fool was pleased with something. 

The boatswain's other hand had found some other body, for in a changedtone he began to inquire: "Is it you, sir? Is it you, sir?" The windstrangled his howls. 

"Yes!" cried Captain MacWhirr. 

IV

All that the boatswain, out of a superabundance of yells, could makeclear to Captain MacWhirr was the bizarre intelligence that "All themChinamen in the fore 'tween deck have fetched away, sir. "

Jukes to leeward could hear these two shouting within six inches ofhis face, as you may hear on a still night half a mile away two menconversing across a field. He heard Captain MacWhirr's exasperated"What? What?" and the strained pitch of the other's hoarseness. "In alump . . . Seen them myself. . . . Awful sight, sir . . . Thought . . . Tell you. "

Jukes remained indifferent, as if rendered irresponsible by the forceof the hurricane, which made the very thought of action utterly vain. Besides, being very young, he had found the occupation of keeping hisheart completely steeled against the worst so engrossing that he hadcome to feel an overpowering dislike towards any other form of activitywhatever. He was not scared; he knew this because, firmly believing hewould never see another sunrise, he remained calm in that belief. 

These are the moments of do-nothing heroics to which even good mensurrender at times. Many officers of ships can no doubt recall a casein their experience when just such a trance of confounded stoicism wouldcome all at once over a whole ship's company. Jukes, however, hadno wide experience of men or storms. He conceived himself to becalm--inexorably calm; but as a matter of fact he was daunted; notabjectly, but only so far as a decent man may, without becomingloathsome to himself. 

It was rather like a forced-on numbness of spirit. The long, longstress of a gale does it; the suspense of the interminably culminatingcatastrophe; and there is a bodily fatigue in the mere holding on toexistence within the excessive tumult; a searching and insidious fatiguethat penetrates deep into a man's breast to cast down and sadden hisheart, which is incorrigible, and of all the gifts of the earth--evenbefore life itself--aspires to peace. 

Jukes was benumbed much more than he supposed. He held on--very wet, very cold, stiff in every limb; and in a momentary hallucination ofswift visions (it is said that a drowning man thus reviews all his life)he beheld all sorts of memories altogether unconnected with his presentsituation. He remembered his father, for instance: a worthy businessman, who at an unfortunate crisis in his affairs went quietly to bedand died forthwith in a state of resignation. Jukes did not recall thesecircumstances, of course, but remaining otherwise unconcerned he seemedto see distinctly the poor man's face; a certain game of nap played whenquite a boy in Table Bay on board a ship, since lost with all hands;the thick eyebrows of his first skipper; and without any emotion, ashe might years ago have walked listlessly into her room and found hersitting there with a book, he remembered his mother--dead, too, now--theresolute woman, left badly off, who had been very firm in his bringingup. 

It could not have lasted more than a second, perhaps not so much. Aheavy arm had fallen about his shoulders; Captain MacWhirr's voice wasspeaking his name into his ear. 

"Jukes! Jukes!"

He detected the tone of deep concern. The wind had thrown its weighton the ship, trying to pin her down amongst the seas. They made a cleanbreach over her, as over a deep-swimming log; and the gathered weightof crashes menaced monstrously from afar. The breakers flung out of thenight with a ghostly light on their crests--the light of sea-foam thatin a ferocious, boiling-up pale flash showed upon the slender body ofthe ship the toppling rush, the downfall, and the seething mad scurryof each wave. Never for a moment could she shake herself clear ofthe water; Jukes, rigid, perceived in her motion the ominous sign ofhaphazard floundering. She was no longer struggling intelligently. Itwas the beginning of the end; and the note of busy concern in CaptainMacWhirr's voice sickened him like an exhibition of blind and perniciousfolly. 

The spell of the storm had fallen upon Jukes. He was penetrated by it, absorbed by it; he was rooted in it with a rigour of dumb attention. Captain MacWhirr persisted in his cries, but the wind got between themlike a solid wedge. He hung round Jukes' neck as heavy as a millstone, and suddenly the sides of their heads knocked together. 

"Jukes! Mr. Jukes, I say!"

He had to answer that voice that would not be silenced. He answered inthe customary manner: ". . . Yes, sir. "

And directly, his heart, corrupted by the storm that breeds a cravingfor peace, rebelled against the tyranny of training and command. 

Captain MacWhirr had his mate's head fixed firm in the crook of hiselbow, and pressed it to his yelling lips mysteriously. SometimesJukes would break in, admonishing hastily: "Look out, sir!" or CaptainMacWhirr would bawl an earnest exhortation to "Hold hard, there!" andthe whole black universe seemed to reel together with the ship. Theypaused. She floated yet. And Captain MacWhirr would resume, his shouts. ". . . . Says . . . Whole lot . . . Fetched away. . . . Ought to see. . . What's the matter. "

Directly the full force of the hurricane had struck the ship, every partof her deck became untenable; and the sailors, dazed and dismayed, tookshelter in the port alleyway under the bridge. It had a door aft, whichthey shut; it was very black, cold, and dismal. At each heavy fling ofthe ship they would groan all together in the dark, and tons of watercould be heard scuttling about as if trying to get at them from above. The boatswain had been keeping up a gruff talk, but a more unreasonablelot of men, he said afterwards, he had never been with. They were snugenough there, out of harm's way, and not wanted to do anything, either;and yet they did nothing but grumble and complain peevishly like so manysick kids. Finally, one of them said that if there had been at leastsome light to see each other's noses by, it wouldn't be so bad. It wasmaking him crazy, he declared, to lie there in the dark waiting for theblamed hooker to sink. 

"Why don't you step outside, then, and be done with it at once?" theboatswain turned on him. 

This called up a shout of execration. The boatswain found himselfoverwhelmed with reproaches of all sorts. They seemed to take it illthat a lamp was not instantly created for them out of nothing. Theywould whine after a light to get drowned by--anyhow! And though theunreason of their revilings was patent--since no one could hope to reachthe lamp-room, which was forward--he became greatly distressed. He didnot think it was decent of them to be nagging at him like this. He toldthem so, and was met by general contumely. He sought refuge, therefore, in an embittered silence. At the same time their grumbling and sighingand muttering worried him greatly, but by-and-by it occurred to him thatthere were six globe lamps hung in the 'tween-deck, and that there couldbe no harm in depriving the coolies of one of them. 

The Nan-Shan had an athwartship coal-bunker, which, being at times usedas cargo space, communicated by an iron door with the fore 'tween-deck. It was empty then, and its manhole was the foremost one in the alleyway. The boatswain could get in, therefore, without coming out on deck atall; but to his great surprise he found he could induce no one to helphim in taking off the manhole cover. He groped for it all the same, butone of the crew lying in his way refused to budge. 

"Why, I only want to get you that blamed light you are crying for, " heexpostulated, almost pitifully. 

Somebody told him to go and put his head in a bag. He regretted he couldnot recognize the voice, and that it was too dark to see, otherwise, as he said, he would have put a head on that son of a sea-cook, anyway, sink or swim. Nevertheless, he had made up his mind to show them hecould get a light, if he were to die for it. 

Through the violence of the ship's rolling, every movement wasdangerous. To be lying down seemed labour enough. He nearly brokehis neck dropping into the bunker. He fell on his back, and was sentshooting helplessly from side to side in the dangerous company of aheavy iron bar--a coal-trimmer's slice probably--left down there bysomebody. This thing made him as nervous as though it had been awild beast. He could not see it, the inside of the bunker coated withcoal-dust being perfectly and impenetrably black; but he heard itsliding and clattering, and striking here and there, always in theneighbourhood of his head. It seemed to make an extraordinary noise, too--to give heavy thumps as though it had been as big as a bridgegirder. This was remarkable enough for him to notice while he was flungfrom port to starboard and back again, and clawing desperately thesmooth sides of the bunker in the endeavour to stop himself. The doorinto the 'tween-deck not fitting quite true, he saw a thread of dimlight at the bottom. 

Being a sailor, and a still active man, he did not want much of a chanceto regain his feet; and as luck would have it, in scrambling up he puthis hand on the iron slice, picking it up as he rose. Otherwise he wouldhave been afraid of the thing breaking his legs, or at least knockinghim down again. At first he stood still. He felt unsafe in this darknessthat seemed to make the ship's motion unfamiliar, unforeseen, anddifficult to counteract. He felt so much shaken for a moment that hedared not move for fear of "taking charge again. " He had no mind to getbattered to pieces in that bunker. 

He had struck his head twice; he was dazed a little. He seemed to hearyet so plainly the clatter and bangs of the iron slice flying abouthis ears that he tightened his grip to prove to himself he had it theresafely in his hand. He was vaguely amazed at the plainness with whichdown there he could hear the gale raging. Its howls and shrieks seemedto take on, in the emptiness of the bunker, something of the humancharacter, of human rage and pain--being not vast but infinitelypoignant. And there were, with every roll, thumps, too--profound, ponderous thumps, as if a bulky object of five-ton weight or so had gotplay in the hold. But there was no such thing in the cargo. Something ondeck? Impossible. Or alongside? Couldn't be. 

He thought all this quickly, clearly, competently, like a seaman, andin the end remained puzzled. This noise, though, came deadened fromoutside, together with the washing and pouring of water on deck abovehis head. Was it the wind? Must be. It made down there a row like theshouting of a big lot of crazed men. And he discovered in himselfa desire for a light, too--if only to get drowned by--and a nervousanxiety to get out of that bunker as quickly as possible. 

He pulled back the bolt: the heavy iron plate turned on its hinges; andit was as though he had opened the door to the sounds of the tempest. A gust of hoarse yelling met him: the air was still; and the rushingof water overhead was covered by a tumult of strangled, throaty shrieksthat produced an effect of desperate confusion. He straddled his legsthe whole width of the doorway and stretched his neck. And at firsthe perceived only what he had come to seek: six small yellow flamesswinging violently on the great body of the dusk. 

It was stayed like the gallery of a mine, with a row of stanchionsin the middle, and cross-beams overhead, penetrating into the gloomahead--indefinitely. And to port there loomed, like the caving in ofone of the sides, a bulky mass with a slanting outline. The whole place, with the shadows and the shapes, moved all the time. The boatswainglared: the ship lurched to starboard, and a great howl came from thatmass that had the slant of fallen earth. 

Pieces of wood whizzed past. Planks, he thought, inexpressibly startled, and flinging back his head. At his feet a man went sliding over, open-eyed, on his back, straining with uplifted arms for nothing: andanother came bounding like a detached stone with his head between hislegs and his hands clenched. His pigtail whipped in the air; he made agrab at the boatswain's legs, and from his opened hand a bright whitedisc rolled against the boatswain's foot. He recognized a silver dollar, and yelled at it with astonishment. With a precipitated sound oftrampling and shuffling of bare feet, and with guttural cries, the moundof writhing bodies piled up to port detached itself from the ship's sideand sliding, inert and struggling, shifted to starboard, with a dull, brutal thump. The cries ceased. The boatswain heard a long moan throughthe roar and whistling of the wind; he saw an inextricable confusion ofheads and shoulders, naked soles kicking upwards, fists raised, tumblingbacks, legs, pigtails, faces. 

"Good Lord!" he cried, horrified, and banged-to the iron door upon thisvision. 

This was what he had come on the bridge to tell. He could not keep itto himself; and on board ship there is only one man to whom it isworth while to unburden yourself. On his passage back the hands in thealleyway swore at him for a fool. Why didn't he bring that lamp? Whatthe devil did the coolies matter to anybody? And when he came out, theextremity of the ship made what went on inside of her appear of littlemoment. 

At first he thought he had left the alleyway in the very moment of hersinking. The bridge ladders had been washed away, but an enormous seafilling the after-deck floated him up. After that he had to lie on hisstomach for some time, holding to a ring-bolt, getting his breath nowand then, and swallowing salt water. He struggled farther on his handsand knees, too frightened and distracted to turn back. In this wayhe reached the after-part of the wheelhouse. In that comparativelysheltered spot he found the second mate. 

The boatswain was pleasantly surprised--his impression being thateverybody on deck must have been washed away a long time ago. He askedeagerly where the Captain was. 

The second mate was lying low, like a malignant little animal under ahedge. 

"Captain? Gone overboard, after getting us into this mess. " The mate, too, for all he knew or cared. Another fool. Didn't matter. Everybodywas going by-and-by. 

The boatswain crawled out again into the strength of the wind; notbecause he much expected to find anybody, he said, but just to get awayfrom "that man. " He crawled out as outcasts go to face an inclementworld. Hence his great joy at finding Jukes and the Captain. But whatwas going on in the 'tween-deck was to him a minor matter by that time. Besides, it was difficult to make yourself heard. But he managed toconvey the idea that the Chinaman had broken adrift together with theirboxes, and that he had come up on purpose to report this. As to thehands, they were all right. Then, appeased, he subsided on the deck ina sitting posture, hugging with his arms and legs the stand of theengine-room telegraph--an iron casting as thick as a post. When thatwent, why, he expected he would go, too. He gave no more thought to thecoolies. 

Captain MacWhirr had made Jukes understand that he wanted him to go downbelow--to see. 

"What am I to do then, sir?" And the trembling of his whole wet bodycaused Jukes' voice to sound like bleating. 

"See first . . . Boss'n . . . Says . . . Adrift. "

"That boss'n is a confounded fool, " howled Jukes, shakily. 

The absurdity of the demand made upon him revolted Jukes. He was asunwilling to go as if the moment he had left the deck the ship were sureto sink. 

"I must know . . . Can't leave. . . . "

"They'll settle, sir. "

"Fight . . . Boss'n says they fight. . . . Why? Can't have . . . Fighting . . . Board ship. . . . Much rather keep you here . . . Case. . . I should . . . Washed overboard myself. . . . Stop it . . . Someway. You see and tell me . . . Through engine-room tube. Don't want you. . . Come up here . . . Too often. Dangerous . . . Moving about . . . Deck. "

Jukes, held with his head in chancery, had to listen to what seemedhorrible suggestions. 

"Don't want . . . You get lost . . . So long . . . Ship isn't. . . . . Rout . . . Good man . . . Ship . . . May . . . Through this . . . Allright yet. "

All at once Jukes understood he would have to go. 

"Do you think she may?" he screamed. 

But the wind devoured the reply, out of which Jukes heard only the oneword, pronounced with great energy ". . . . Always. . . . "

Captain MacWhirr released Jukes, and bending over the boatswain, yelled, "Get back with the mate. " Jukes only knew that the arm was gone offhis shoulders. He was dismissed with his orders--to do what? He wasexasperated into letting go his hold carelessly, and on the instantwas blown away. It seemed to him that nothing could stop him from beingblown right over the stern. He flung himself down hastily, and theboatswain, who was following, fell on him. 

"Don't you get up yet, sir, " cried the boatswain. "No hurry!"

A sea swept over. Jukes understood the boatswain to splutter that thebridge ladders were gone. "I'll lower you down, sir, by your hands, "he screamed. He shouted also something about the smoke-stack beingas likely to go overboard as not. Jukes thought it very possible, andimagined the fires out, the ship helpless. . . . The boatswain by hisside kept on yelling. "What? What is it?" Jukes cried distressfully; andthe other repeated, "What would my old woman say if she saw me now?"

In the alleyway, where a lot of water had got in and splashed in thedark, the men were still as death, till Jukes stumbled against one ofthem and cursed him savagely for being in the way. Two or three voicesthen asked, eager and weak, "Any chance for us, sir?"

"What's the matter with you fools?" he said brutally. He felt as thoughhe could throw himself down amongst them and never move any more. Butthey seemed cheered; and in the midst of obsequious warnings, "Lookout! Mind that manhole lid, sir, " they lowered him into the bunker. Theboatswain tumbled down after him, and as soon as he had picked himselfup he remarked, "She would say, 'Serve you right, you old fool, forgoing to sea. '"

The boatswain had some means, and made a point of alluding to themfrequently. His wife--a fat woman--and two grown-up daughters kept agreengrocer's shop in the East-end of London. 

In the dark, Jukes, unsteady on his legs, listened to a faint thunderouspatter. A deadened screaming went on steadily at his elbow, as it were;and from above the louder tumult of the storm descended upon these nearsounds. His head swam. To him, too, in that bunker, the motion of theship seemed novel and menacing, sapping his resolution as though he hadnever been afloat before. 

He had half a mind to scramble out again; but the remembrance of CaptainMacWhirr's voice made this impossible. His orders were to go and see. What was the good of it, he wanted to know. Enraged, he told himself hewould see--of course. But the boatswain, staggering clumsily, warned himto be careful how he opened that door; there was a blamed fight goingon. And Jukes, as if in great bodily pain, desired irritably to knowwhat the devil they were fighting for. 

"Dollars! Dollars, sir. All their rotten chests got burst open. Blamedmoney skipping all over the place, and they are tumbling after it headover heels--tearing and biting like anything. A regular little hell inthere. "

Jukes convulsively opened the door. The short boatswain peered under hisarm. 

One of the lamps had gone out, broken perhaps. Rancorous, guttural criesburst out loudly on their ears, and a strange panting sound, the workingof all these straining breasts. A hard blow hit the side of the ship:water fell above with a stunning shock, and in the forefront of thegloom, where the air was reddish and thick, Jukes saw a head bang thedeck violently, two thick calves waving on high, muscular arms twinedround a naked body, a yellow-face, open-mouthed and with a set wildstare, look up and slide away. An empty chest clattered turning over;a man fell head first with a jump, as if lifted by a kick; and fartheroff, indistinct, others streamed like a mass of rolling stones downa bank, thumping the deck with their feet and flourishing their armswildly. The hatchway ladder was loaded with coolies swarming on itlike bees on a branch. They hung on the steps in a crawling, stirringcluster, beating madly with their fists the underside of the battenedhatch, and the headlong rush of the water above was heard in theintervals of their yelling. The ship heeled over more, and they beganto drop off: first one, then two, then all the rest went away together, falling straight off with a great cry. 

Jukes was confounded. The boatswain, with gruff anxiety, begged him, "Don't you go in there, sir. "

The whole place seemed to twist upon itself, jumping incessantly thewhile; and when the ship rose to a sea Jukes fancied that all these menwould be shot upon him in a body. He backed out, swung the door to, andwith trembling hands pushed at the bolt. . . . 

As soon as his mate had gone Captain MacWhirr, left alone on the bridge, sidled and staggered as far as the wheelhouse. Its door being hingedforward, he had to fight the gale for admittance, and when at last hemanaged to enter, it was with an instantaneous clatter and a bang, asthough he had been fired through the wood. He stood within, holding onto the handle. 

The steering-gear leaked steam, and in the confined space the glass ofthe binnacle made a shiny oval of light in a thin white fog. The windhowled, hummed, whistled, with sudden booming gusts that rattledthe doors and shutters in the vicious patter of sprays. Two coils oflead-line and a small canvas bag hung on a long lanyard, swung wide off, and came back clinging to the bulkheads. The gratings underfoot werenearly afloat; with every sweeping blow of a sea, water squirtedviolently through the cracks all round the door, and the man at thehelm had flung down his cap, his coat, and stood propped against thegear-casing in a striped cotton shirt open on his breast. The littlebrass wheel in his hands had the appearance of a bright and fragiletoy. The cords of his neck stood hard and lean, a dark patch lay in thehollow of his throat, and his face was still and sunken as in death. 

Captain MacWhirr wiped his eyes. The sea that had nearly taken himoverboard had, to his great annoyance, washed his sou'-wester hat offhis bald head. The fluffy, fair hair, soaked and darkened, resembled amean skein of cotton threads festooned round his bare skull. His face, glistening with sea-water, had been made crimson with the wind, withthe sting of sprays. He looked as though he had come off sweating frombefore a furnace. 

"You here?" he muttered, heavily. 

The second mate had found his way into the wheelhouse some time before. He had fixed himself in a corner with his knees up, a fist pressedagainst each temple; and this attitude suggested rage, sorrow, resignation, surrender, with a sort of concentrated unforgiveness. Hesaid mournfully and defiantly, "Well, it's my watch below now: ain'tit?"

The steam gear clattered, stopped, clattered again; and the helmsman'seyeballs seemed to project out of a hungry face as if the compass cardbehind the binnacle glass had been meat. God knows how long he had beenleft there to steer, as if forgotten by all his shipmates. The bells hadnot been struck; there had been no reliefs; the ship's routine had gonedown wind; but he was trying to keep her head north-north-east. Therudder might have been gone for all he knew, the fires out, the enginesbroken down, the ship ready to roll over like a corpse. He wasanxious not to get muddled and lose control of her head, because thecompass-card swung far both ways, wriggling on the pivot, and sometimesseemed to whirl right round. He suffered from mental stress. He washorribly afraid, also, of the wheelhouse going. Mountains of water kepton tumbling against it. When the ship took one of her desperate divesthe corners of his lips twitched. 

Captain MacWhirr looked up at the wheelhouse clock. Screwed to thebulk-head, it had a white face on which the black hands appeared tostand quite still. It was half-past one in the morning. 

"Another day, " he muttered to himself. 

The second mate heard him, and lifting his head as one grieving amongstruins, "You won't see it break, " he exclaimed. His wrists and his kneescould be seen to shake violently. "No, by God! You won't. . . . "

He took his face again between his fists. 

The body of the helmsman had moved slightly, but his head didn't budgeon his neck, --like a stone head fixed to look one way from a column. During a roll that all but took his booted legs from under him, andin the very stagger to save himself, Captain MacWhirr said austerely, "Don't you pay any attention to what that man says. " And then, with anindefinable change of tone, very grave, he added, "He isn't on duty. "

The sailor said nothing. 

The hurricane boomed, shaking the little place, which seemed air-tight;and the light of the binnacle flickered all the time. 

"You haven't been relieved, " Captain MacWhirr went on, looking down. "Iwant you to stick to the helm, though, as long as you can. You'vegot the hang of her. Another man coming here might make a mess of it. Wouldn't do. No child's play. And the hands are probably busy with a jobdown below. . . . Think you can?"

The steering-gear leaped into an abrupt short clatter, stoppedsmouldering like an ember; and the still man, with a motionless gaze, burst out, as if all the passion in him had gone into his lips: "ByHeavens, sir! I can steer for ever if nobody talks to me. "

"Oh! aye! All right. . . . " The Captain lifted his eyes for the firsttime to the man, ". . . Hackett. "

And he seemed to dismiss this matter from his mind. He stooped to theengine-room speaking-tube, blew in, and bent his head. Mr. Rout belowanswered, and at once Captain MacWhirr put his lips to the mouthpiece. 

With the uproar of the gale around him he applied alternately his lipsand his ear, and the engineer's voice mounted to him, harsh and as ifout of the heat of an engagement. One of the stokers was disabled, the others had given in, the second engineer and the donkey-man werefiring-up. The third engineer was standing by the steam-valve. Theengines were being tended by hand. How was it above?

"Bad enough. It mostly rests with you, " said Captain MacWhirr. Was themate down there yet? No? Well, he would be presently. Would Mr. Routlet him talk through the speaking-tube?--through the deck speaking-tube, because he--the Captain--was going out again on the bridge directly. There was some trouble amongst the Chinamen. They were fighting, itseemed. Couldn't allow fighting anyhow. . . . 

Mr. Rout had gone away, and Captain MacWhirr could feel against his earthe pulsation of the engines, like the beat of the ship's heart. Mr. Rout's voice down there shouted something distantly. The ship pitchedheadlong, the pulsation leaped with a hissing tumult, and stopped dead. Captain MacWhirr's face was impassive, and his eyes were fixed aimlesslyon the crouching shape of the second mate. Again Mr. Rout's voicecried out in the depths, and the pulsating beats recommenced, with slowstrokes--growing swifter. 

Mr. Rout had returned to the tube. "It don't matter much what they do, "he said, hastily; and then, with irritation, "She takes these dives asif she never meant to come up again. "

"Awful sea, " said the Captain's voice from above. 

"Don't let me drive her under, " barked Solomon Rout up the pipe. 

"Dark and rain. Can't see what's coming, " uttered the voice. "Must--keep--her--moving--enough to steer--and chance it, " it went on tostate distinctly. 

"I am doing as much as I dare. "

"We are--getting--smashed up--a good deal up here, " proceeded the voicemildly. "Doing--fairly well--though. Of course, if the wheelhouse shouldgo. . . . "

Mr. Rout, bending an attentive ear, muttered peevishly something underhis breath. 

But the deliberate voice up there became animated to ask: "Jukes turnedup yet?" Then, after a short wait, "I wish he would bear a hand. I wanthim to be done and come up here in case of anything. To look after theship. I am all alone. The second mate's lost. . . . "

"What?" shouted Mr. Rout into the engine-room, taking his head away. Then up the tube he cried, "Gone overboard?" and clapped his ear to. 

"Lost his nerve, " the voice from above continued in a matter-of-facttone. "Damned awkward circumstance. "

Mr. Rout, listening with bowed neck, opened his eyes wide at this. However, he heard something like the sounds of a scuffle and brokenexclamations coming down to him. He strained his hearing; and all thetime Beale, the third engineer, with his arms uplifted, held betweenthe palms of his hands the rim of a little black wheel projecting at theside of a big copper pipe. 

He seemed to be poising it above his head, as though it were a correctattitude in some sort of game. 

To steady himself, he pressed his shoulder against the white bulkhead, one knee bent, and a sweat-rag tucked in his belt hanging on his hip. His smooth cheek was begrimed and flushed, and the coal dust on hiseyelids, like the black pencilling of a make-up, enhanced the liquidbrilliance of the whites, giving to his youthful face something of afeminine, exotic and fascinating aspect. When the ship pitched he wouldwith hasty movements of his hands screw hard at the little wheel. 

"Gone crazy, " began the Captain's voice suddenly in the tube. "Rushed atme. . . . Just now. Had to knock him down. . . . This minute. You heard, Mr. Rout?"

"The devil!" muttered Mr. Rout. "Look out, Beale!"

His shout rang out like the blast of a warning trumpet, between the ironwalls of the engine-room. Painted white, they rose high into the dusk ofthe skylight, sloping like a roof; and the whole lofty space resembledthe interior of a monument, divided by floors of iron grating, withlights flickering at different levels, and a mass of gloom lingering inthe middle, within the columnar stir of machinery under the motionlessswelling of the cylinders. A loud and wild resonance, made up of all thenoises of the hurricane, dwelt in the still warmth of the air. There wasin it the smell of hot metal, of oil, and a slight mist of steam. Theblows of the sea seemed to traverse it in an unringing, stunning shock, from side to side. 

Gleams, like pale long flames, trembled upon the polish of metal; fromthe flooring below the enormous crank-heads emerged in their turnswith a flash of brass and steel--going over; while the connecting-rods, big-jointed, like skeleton limbs, seemed to thrust them down and pullthem up again with an irresistible precision. And deep in the half-lightother rods dodged deliberately to and fro, crossheads nodded, discsof metal rubbed smoothly against each other, slow and gentle, in acommingling of shadows and gleams. 

Sometimes all those powerful and unerring movements would slow downsimultaneously, as if they had been the functions of a living organism, stricken suddenly by the blight of languor; and Mr. Rout's eyes wouldblaze darker in his long sallow face. He was fighting this fight in apair of carpet slippers. A short shiny jacket barely covered his loins, and his white wrists protruded far out of the tight sleeves, as thoughthe emergency had added to his stature, had lengthened his limbs, augmented his pallor, hollowed his eyes. 

He moved, climbing high up, disappearing low down, with a restless, purposeful industry, and when he stood still, holding the guard-rail infront of the starting-gear, he would keep glancing to the right at thesteam-gauge, at the water-gauge, fixed upon the white wall in the lightof a swaying lamp. The mouths of two speaking-tubes gaped stupidly at hiselbow, and the dial of the engine-room telegraph resembled a clock oflarge diameter, bearing on its face curt words instead of figures. Thegrouped letters stood out heavily black, around the pivot-head of theindicator, emphatically symbolic of loud exclamations: AHEAD, ASTERN, SLOW, Half, STAND BY; and the fat black hand pointed downwards to theword FULL, which, thus singled out, captured the eye as a sharp crysecures attention. 

The wood-encased bulk of the low-pressure cylinder, frowning portly fromabove, emitted a faint wheeze at every thrust, and except for thatlow hiss the engines worked their steel limbs headlong or slow with asilent, determined smoothness. And all this, the white walls, the movingsteel, the floor plates under Solomon Rout's feet, the floors ofiron grating above his head, the dusk and the gleams, uprose and sankcontinuously, with one accord, upon the harsh wash of the waves againstthe ship's side. The whole loftiness of the place, booming hollow to thegreat voice of the wind, swayed at the top like a tree, would go overbodily, as if borne down this way and that by the tremendous blasts. 

"You've got to hurry up, " shouted Mr. Rout, as soon as he saw Jukesappear in the stokehold doorway. 

Jukes' glance was wandering and tipsy; his red face was puffy, as thoughhe had overslept himself. He had had an arduous road, and had travelledover it with immense vivacity, the agitation of his mind correspondingto the exertions of his body. He had rushed up out of the bunker, stumbling in the dark alleyway amongst a lot of bewildered men who, trodupon, asked "What's up, sir?" in awed mutters all round him;--down thestokehold ladder, missing many iron rungs in his hurry, down into aplace deep as a well, black as Tophet, tipping over back and forth likea see-saw. The water in the bilges thundered at each roll, and lumps ofcoal skipped to and fro, from end to end, rattling like an avalanche ofpebbles on a slope of iron. 

Somebody in there moaned with pain, and somebody else could be seencrouching over what seemed the prone body of a dead man; a lusty voiceblasphemed; and the glow under each fire-door was like a pool of flamingblood radiating quietly in a velvety blackness. 

A gust of wind struck upon the nape of Jukes' neck and next momenthe felt it streaming about his wet ankles. The stokehold ventilatorshummed: in front of the six fire-doors two wild figures, stripped to thewaist, staggered and stooped, wrestling with two shovels. 

"Hallo! Plenty of draught now, " yelled the second engineer at once, asthough he had been all the time looking out for Jukes. The donkeyman, a dapper little chap with a dazzling fair skin and a tiny, gingerymoustache, worked in a sort of mute transport. They were keeping a fullhead of steam, and a profound rumbling, as of an empty furniture vantrotting over a bridge, made a sustained bass to all the other noises ofthe place. 

"Blowing off all the time, " went on yelling the second. With a sound asof a hundred scoured saucepans, the orifice of a ventilator spat uponhis shoulder a sudden gush of salt water, and he volleyed a stream ofcurses upon all things on earth including his own soul, ripping andraving, and all the time attending to his business. With a sharp clashof metal the ardent pale glare of the fire opened upon his bullet head, showing his spluttering lips, his insolent face, and with another clangclosed like the white-hot wink of an iron eye. 

"Where's the blooming ship? Can you tell me? blast my eyes! Underwater--or what? It's coming down here in tons. Are the condemned cowlsgone to Hades? Hey? Don't you know anything--you jolly sailor-man you. . . ?"

Jukes, after a bewildered moment, had been helped by a roll to dartthrough; and as soon as his eyes took in the comparative vastness, peaceand brilliance of the engine-room, the ship, setting her stern heavilyin the water, sent him charging head down upon Mr. Rout. 

The chief's arm, long like a tentacle, and straightening as if workedby a spring, went out to meet him, and deflected his rush into aspin towards the speaking-tubes. At the same time Mr. Rout repeatedearnestly:

"You've got to hurry up, whatever it is. "

Jukes yelled "Are you there, sir?" and listened. Nothing. Suddenly theroar of the wind fell straight into his ear, but presently a small voiceshoved aside the shouting hurricane quietly. 

"You, Jukes?--Well?"

Jukes was ready to talk: it was only time that seemed to be wanting. Itwas easy enough to account for everything. He could perfectly imaginethe coolies battened down in the reeking 'tween-deck, lying sick andscared between the rows of chests. Then one of these chests--or perhapsseveral at once--breaking loose in a roll, knocking out others, sidessplitting, lids flying open, and all these clumsy Chinamen rising up ina body to save their property. Afterwards every fling of the ship wouldhurl that tramping, yelling mob here and there, from side to side, in awhirl of smashed wood, torn clothing, rolling dollars. A struggle oncestarted, they would be unable to stop themselves. Nothing could stopthem now except main force. It was a disaster. He had seen it, and thatwas all he could say. Some of them must be dead, he believed. The restwould go on fighting. . . . 

He sent up his words, tripping over each other, crowding the narrowtube. They mounted as if into a silence of an enlightened comprehensiondwelling alone up there with a storm. And Jukes wanted to be dismissedfrom the face of that odious trouble intruding on the great need of theship. 

V

He waited. Before his eyes the engines turned with slow labour, that inthe moment of going off into a mad fling would stop dead at Mr. Rout'sshout, "Look out, Beale!" They paused in an intelligent immobility, stilled in mid-stroke, a heavy crank arrested on the cant, as ifconscious of danger and the passage of time. Then, with a "Now, then!"from the chief, and the sound of a breath expelled through clenchedteeth, they would accomplish the interrupted revolution and beginanother. 

There was the prudent sagacity of wisdom and the deliberation ofenormous strength in their movements. This was their work--this patientcoaxing of a distracted ship over the fury of the waves and into thevery eye of the wind. At times Mr. Rout's chin would sink on his breast, and he watched them with knitted eyebrows as if lost in thought. 

The voice that kept the hurricane out of Jukes' ear began: "Take thehands with you . . . , " and left off unexpectedly. 

"What could I do with them, sir?"

A harsh, abrupt, imperious clang exploded suddenly. The three pairs ofeyes flew up to the telegraph dial to see the hand jump from FULLto STOP, as if snatched by a devil. And then these three men in theengineroom had the intimate sensation of a check upon the ship, of astrange shrinking, as if she had gathered herself for a desperate leap. 

"Stop her!" bellowed Mr. Rout. 

Nobody--not even Captain MacWhirr, who alone on deck had caught sight ofa white line of foam coming on at such a height that he couldn't believehis eyes--nobody was to know the steepness of that sea and the awfuldepth of the hollow the hurricane had scooped out behind the runningwall of water. 

It raced to meet the ship, and, with a pause, as of girding the loins, the Nan-Shan lifted her bows and leaped. The flames in all the lampssank, darkening the engine-room. One went out. With a tearing crash anda swirling, raving tumult, tons of water fell upon the deck, as thoughthe ship had darted under the foot of a cataract. 

Down there they looked at each other, stunned. 

"Swept from end to end, by God!" bawled Jukes. 

She dipped into the hollow straight down, as if going over the edge ofthe world. The engine-room toppled forward menacingly, like the insideof a tower nodding in an earthquake. An awful racket, of iron thingsfalling, came from the stokehold. She hung on this appalling slant longenough for Beale to drop on his hands and knees and begin to crawl as ifhe meant to fly on all fours out of the engine-room, and for Mr. Routto turn his head slowly, rigid, cavernous, with the lower jaw dropping. Jukes had shut his eyes, and his face in a moment became hopelesslyblank and gentle, like the face of a blind man. 

At last she rose slowly, staggering, as if she had to lift a mountainwith her bows. 

Mr. Rout shut his mouth; Jukes blinked; and little Beale stood uphastily. 

"Another one like this, and that's the last of her, " cried the chief. 

He and Jukes looked at each other, and the same thought came into theirheads. The Captain! Everything must have been swept away. Steering-geargone--ship like a log. All over directly. 

"Rush!" ejaculated Mr. Rout thickly, glaring with enlarged, doubtfuleyes at Jukes, who answered him by an irresolute glance. 

The clang of the telegraph gong soothed them instantly. The black handdropped in a flash from STOP to FULL. 

"Now then, Beale!" cried Mr. Rout. 

The steam hissed low. The piston-rods slid in and out. Jukes put hisear to the tube. The voice was ready for him. It said: "Pick up all themoney. Bear a hand now. I'll want you up here. " And that was all. 

"Sir?" called up Jukes. There was no answer. 

He staggered away like a defeated man from the field of battle. He hadgot, in some way or other, a cut above his left eyebrow--a cut to thebone. He was not aware of it in the least: quantities of the China Sea, large enough to break his neck for him, had gone over his head, hadcleaned, washed, and salted that wound. It did not bleed, but only gapedred; and this gash over the eye, his dishevelled hair, the disorder ofhis clothes, gave him the aspect of a man worsted in a fight with fists. 

"Got to pick up the dollars. " He appealed to Mr. Rout, smiling pitifullyat random. 

"What's that?" asked Mr. Rout, wildly. "Pick up . . . ? I don't care.. . . " Then, quivering in every muscle, but with an exaggeration ofpaternal tone, "Go away now, for God's sake. You deck people'll driveme silly. There's that second mate been going for the old man. Don't youknow? You fellows are going wrong for want of something to do. . . . "

At these words Jukes discovered in himself the beginnings of anger. Wantof something to do--indeed. . . . Full of hot scorn against thechief, he turned to go the way he had come. In the stokehold the plumpdonkeyman toiled with his shovel mutely, as if his tongue had been cutout; but the second was carrying on like a noisy, undaunted maniac, whohad preserved his skill in the art of stoking under a marine boiler. 

"Hallo, you wandering officer! Hey! Can't you get some of yourslush-slingers to wind up a few of them ashes? I am getting choked withthem here. Curse it! Hallo! Hey! Remember the articles: Sailors andfiremen to assist each other. Hey! D'ye hear?"

Jukes was climbing out frantically, and the other, lifting up his faceafter him, howled, "Can't you speak? What are you poking about here for?What's your game, anyhow?"

A frenzy possessed Jukes. By the time he was back amongst the men in thedarkness of the alleyway, he felt ready to wring all their necks at theslightest sign of hanging back. The very thought of it exasperated him. He couldn't hang back. They shouldn't. 

The impetuosity with which he came amongst them carried them along. Theyhad already been excited and startled at all his comings and goings--bythe fierceness and rapidity of his movements; and more felt than seenin his rushes, he appeared formidable--busied with matters of life anddeath that brooked no delay. At his first word he heard them drop intothe bunker one after another obediently, with heavy thumps. 

They were not clear as to what would have to be done. "What is it? Whatis it?" they were asking each other. The boatswain tried to explain;the sounds of a great scuffle surprised them: and the mighty shocks, reverberating awfully in the black bunker, kept them in mind of theirdanger. When the boatswain threw open the door it seemed that an eddy ofthe hurricane, stealing through the iron sides of the ship, had set allthese bodies whirling like dust: there came to them a confused uproar, a tempestuous tumult, a fierce mutter, gusts of screams dying away, andthe tramping of feet mingling with the blows of the sea. 

For a moment they glared amazed, blocking the doorway. Jukes pushedthrough them brutally. He said nothing, and simply darted in. Anotherlot of coolies on the ladder, struggling suicidally to break through thebattened hatch to a swamped deck, fell off as before, and he disappearedunder them like a man overtaken by a landslide. 

The boatswain yelled excitedly: "Come along. Get the mate out. He'll betrampled to death. Come on. "

They charged in, stamping on breasts, on fingers, on faces, catchingtheir feet in heaps of clothing, kicking broken wood; but before theycould get hold of him Jukes emerged waist deep in a multitude of clawinghands. In the instant he had been lost to view, all the buttons of hisjacket had gone, its back had got split up to the collar, his waistcoathad been torn open. The central struggling mass of Chinamen went over tothe roll, dark, indistinct, helpless, with a wild gleam of many eyes inthe dim light of the lamps. 

"Leave me alone--damn you. I am all right, " screeched Jukes. "Drive themforward. Watch your chance when she pitches. Forward with 'em. Drivethem against the bulkhead. Jam 'em up. "

The rush of the sailors into the seething 'tween-deck was like a splashof cold water into a boiling cauldron. The commotion sank for a moment. 

The bulk of Chinamen were locked in such a compact scrimmage that, linking their arms and aided by an appalling dive of the ship, theseamen sent it forward in one great shove, like a solid block. Behindtheir backs small clusters and loose bodies tumbled from side to side. 

The boatswain performed prodigious feats of strength. With his long armsopen, and each great paw clutching at a stanchion, he stopped the rushof seven entwined Chinamen rolling like a boulder. His joints cracked;he said, "Ha!" and they flew apart. But the carpenter showed the greaterintelligence. Without saying a word to anybody he went back into thealleyway, to fetch several coils of cargo gear he had seen there--chainand rope. With these life-lines were rigged. 

There was really no resistance. The struggle, however it began, hadturned into a scramble of blind panic. If the coolies had started upafter their scattered dollars they were by that time fighting onlyfor their footing. They took each other by the throat merely to savethemselves from being hurled about. Whoever got a hold anywhere wouldkick at the others who caught at his legs and hung on, till a roll sentthem flying together across the deck. 

The coming of the white devils was a terror. Had they come to kill? Theindividuals torn out of the ruck became very limp in the seamen's hands:some, dragged aside by the heels, were passive, like dead bodies, withopen, fixed eyes. Here and there a coolie would fall on his knees as ifbegging for mercy; several, whom the excess of fear made unruly, werehit with hard fists between the eyes, and cowered; while those who werehurt submitted to rough handling, blinking rapidly without a plaint. Faces streamed with blood; there were raw places on the shaven heads, scratches, bruises, torn wounds, gashes. The broken porcelain out of thechests was mostly responsible for the latter. Here and there a Chinaman, wild-eyed, with his tail unplaited, nursed a bleeding sole. 

They had been ranged closely, after having been shaken into submission, cuffed a little to allay excitement, addressed in gruff words ofencouragement that sounded like promises of evil. They sat on the deckin ghastly, drooping rows, and at the end the carpenter, with two handsto help him, moved busily from place to place, setting taut and hitchingthe life-lines. The boatswain, with one leg and one arm embracing astanchion, struggled with a lamp pressed to his breast, trying to geta light, and growling all the time like an industrious gorilla. Thefigures of seamen stooped repeatedly, with the movements of gleaners, and everything was being flung into the bunker: clothing, smashed wood, broken china, and the dollars, too, gathered up in men's jackets. Nowand then a sailor would stagger towards the doorway with his arms fullof rubbish; and dolorous, slanting eyes followed his movements. 

With every roll of the ship the long rows of sitting Celestials wouldsway forward brokenly, and her headlong dives knocked together the lineof shaven polls from end to end. When the wash of water rolling on thedeck died away for a moment, it seemed to Jukes, yet quivering from hisexertions, that in his mad struggle down there he had overcome the windsomehow: that a silence had fallen upon the ship, a silence in which thesea struck thunderously at her sides. 

Everything had been cleared out of the 'tween-deck--all the wreckage, as the men said. They stood erect and tottering above the level of headsand drooping shoulders. Here and there a coolie sobbed for his breath. Where the high light fell, Jukes could see the salient ribs of one, theyellow, wistful face of another; bowed necks; or would meet a dull staredirected at his face. He was amazed that there had been no corpses; butthe lot of them seemed at their last gasp, and they appeared to him morepitiful than if they had been all dead. 

Suddenly one of the coolies began to speak. The light came and went onhis lean, straining face; he threw his head up like a baying hound. Fromthe bunker came the sounds of knocking and the tinkle of some dollarsrolling loose; he stretched out his arm, his mouth yawned black, and theincomprehensible guttural hooting sounds, that did not seem to belong toa human language, penetrated Jukes with a strange emotion as if a brutehad tried to be eloquent. 

Two more started mouthing what seemed to Jukes fierce denunciations; theothers stirred with grunts and growls. Jukes ordered the hands out ofthe 'tweendecks hurriedly. He left last himself, backing through thedoor, while the grunts rose to a loud murmur and hands were extendedafter him as after a malefactor. The boatswain shot the bolt, andremarked uneasily, "Seems as if the wind had dropped, sir. "

The seamen were glad to get back into the alleyway. Secretly each ofthem thought that at the last moment he could rush out on deck--andthat was a comfort. There is something horribly repugnant in the ideaof being drowned under a deck. Now they had done with the Chinamen, theyagain became conscious of the ship's position. 

Jukes on coming out of the alleyway found himself up to the neck inthe noisy water. He gained the bridge, and discovered he could detectobscure shapes as if his sight had become preternaturally acute. He sawfaint outlines. They recalled not the familiar aspect of the Nan-Shan, but something remembered--an old dismantled steamer he had seen yearsago rotting on a mudbank. She recalled that wreck. 

There was no wind, not a breath, except the faint currents created bythe lurches of the ship. The smoke tossed out of the funnel was settlingdown upon her deck. He breathed it as he passed forward. He felt thedeliberate throb of the engines, and heard small sounds that seemed tohave survived the great uproar: the knocking of broken fittings, therapid tumbling of some piece of wreckage on the bridge. He perceiveddimly the squat shape of his captain holding on to a twistedbridge-rail, motionless and swaying as if rooted to the planks. Theunexpected stillness of the air oppressed Jukes. 

"We have done it, sir, " he gasped. 

"Thought you would, " said Captain MacWhirr. 

"Did you?" murmured Jukes to himself. 

"Wind fell all at once, " went on the Captain. 

Jukes burst out: "If you think it was an easy job--"

But his captain, clinging to the rail, paid no attention. "According tothe books the worst is not over yet. "

"If most of them hadn't been half dead with seasickness and fright, notone of us would have come out of that 'tween-deck alive, " said Jukes. 

"Had to do what's fair by them, " mumbled MacWhirr, stolidly. "You don'tfind everything in books. "

"Why, I believe they would have risen on us if I hadn't ordered thehands out of that pretty quick, " continued Jukes with warmth. 

After the whisper of their shouts, their ordinary tones, so distinct, rang out very loud to their ears in the amazing stillness of the air. Itseemed to them they were talking in a dark and echoing vault. 

Through a jagged aperture in the dome of clouds the light of a few starsfell upon the black sea, rising and falling confusedly. Sometimes thehead of a watery cone would topple on board and mingle with the rollingflurry of foam on the swamped deck; and the Nan-Shan wallowed heavily atthe bottom of a circular cistern of clouds. This ring of dense vapours, gyrating madly round the calm of the centre, encompassed the ship likea motionless and unbroken wall of an aspect inconceivably sinister. Within, the sea, as if agitated by an internal commotion, leaped inpeaked mounds that jostled each other, slapping heavily against hersides; and a low moaning sound, the infinite plaint of the storm'sfury, came from beyond the limits of the menacing calm. Captain MacWhirrremained silent, and Jukes' ready ear caught suddenly the faint, long-drawn roar of some immense wave rushing unseen under that thickblackness, which made the appalling boundary of his vision. 

"Of course, " he started resentfully, "they thought we had caught at thechance to plunder them. Of course! You said--pick up the money. Easiersaid than done. They couldn't tell what was in our heads. We came in, smash--right into the middle of them. Had to do it by a rush. "

"As long as it's done . . . , " mumbled the Captain, without attemptingto look at Jukes. "Had to do what's fair. "

"We shall find yet there's the devil to pay when this is over, " saidJukes, feeling very sore. "Let them only recover a bit, and you'llsee. They will fly at our throats, sir. Don't forget, sir, she isn'ta British ship now. These brutes know it well, too. The damned Siameseflag. "

"We are on board, all the same, " remarked Captain MacWhirr. 

"The trouble's not over yet, " insisted Jukes, prophetically, reeling andcatching on. "She's a wreck, " he added, faintly. 

"The trouble's not over yet, " assented Captain MacWhirr, half aloud. . . . "Look out for her a minute. "

"Are you going off the deck, sir?" asked Jukes, hurriedly, as if thestorm were sure to pounce upon him as soon as he had been left alonewith the ship. 

He watched her, battered and solitary, labouring heavily in a wild sceneof mountainous black waters lit by the gleams of distant worlds. Shemoved slowly, breathing into the still core of the hurricane the excessof her strength in a white cloud of steam--and the deep-toned vibrationof the escape was like the defiant trumpeting of a living creature ofthe sea impatient for the renewal of the contest. It ceased suddenly. The still air moaned. Above Jukes' head a few stars shone into a pitof black vapours. The inky edge of the cloud-disc frowned upon the shipunder the patch of glittering sky. The stars, too, seemed to look at herintently, as if for the last time, and the cluster of their splendoursat like a diadem on a lowering brow. 

Captain MacWhirr had gone into the chart-room. There was no light there;but he could feel the disorder of that place where he used to livetidily. His armchair was upset. The books had tumbled out on the floor:he scrunched a piece of glass under his boot. He groped for the matches, and found a box on a shelf with a deep ledge. He struck one, andpuckering the corners of his eyes, held out the little flame towardsthe barometer whose glittering top of glass and metals nodded at himcontinuously. 

It stood very low--incredibly low, so low that Captain MacWhirr grunted. The match went out, and hurriedly he extracted another, with thick, stiff fingers. 

Again a little flame flared up before the nodding glass and metal of thetop. His eyes looked at it, narrowed with attention, as if expectingan imperceptible sign. With his grave face he resembled a booted andmisshapen pagan burning incense before the oracle of a Joss. There wasno mistake. It was the lowest reading he had ever seen in his life. 

Captain MacWhirr emitted a low whistle. He forgot himself till the flamediminished to a blue spark, burnt his fingers and vanished. Perhapssomething had gone wrong with the thing!

There was an aneroid glass screwed above the couch. He turned thatway, struck another match, and discovered the white face of the otherinstrument looking at him from the bulkhead, meaningly, not to begainsaid, as though the wisdom of men were made unerring by theindifference of matter. There was no room for doubt now. CaptainMacWhirr pshawed at it, and threw the match down. 

The worst was to come, then--and if the books were right this worstwould be very bad. The experience of the last six hours had enlarged hisconception of what heavy weather could be like. "It'll be terrific, " hepronounced, mentally. He had not consciously looked at anything by thelight of the matches except at the barometer; and yet somehow he hadseen that his water-bottle and the two tumblers had been flung out oftheir stand. It seemed to give him a more intimate knowledge of thetossing the ship had gone through. "I wouldn't have believed it, " hethought. And his table had been cleared, too; his rulers, his pencils, the inkstand--all the things that had their safe appointed places--theywere gone, as if a mischievous hand had plucked them out one by oneand flung them on the wet floor. The hurricane had broken in upon theorderly arrangements of his privacy. This had never happened before, andthe feeling of dismay reached the very seat of his composure. And theworst was to come yet! He was glad the trouble in the 'tween-deck hadbeen discovered in time. If the ship had to go after all, then, atleast, she wouldn't be going to the bottom with a lot of people inher fighting teeth and claw. That would have been odious. And in thatfeeling there was a humane intention and a vague sense of the fitness ofthings. 

These instantaneous thoughts were yet in their essence heavy and slow, partaking of the nature of the man. He extended his hand to put back thematchbox in its corner of the shelf. There were always matches there--byhis order. The steward had his instructions impressed upon him longbefore. "A box . . . Just there, see? Not so very full . . . Where I canput my hand on it, steward. Might want a light in a hurry. Can't tell onboard ship what you might want in a hurry. Mind, now. "

And of course on his side he would be careful to put it back in itsplace scrupulously. He did so now, but before he removed his hand itoccurred to him that perhaps he would never have occasion to use thatbox any more. The vividness of the thought checked him and for aninfinitesimal fraction of a second his fingers closed again on the smallobject as though it had been the symbol of all these little habits thatchain us to the weary round of life. He released it at last, and lettinghimself fall on the settee, listened for the first sounds of returningwind. 

Not yet. He heard only the wash of water, the heavy splashes, the dullshocks of the confused seas boarding his ship from all sides. She wouldnever have a chance to clear her decks. 

But the quietude of the air was startlingly tense and unsafe, like aslender hair holding a sword suspended over his head. By this awfulpause the storm penetrated the defences of the man and unsealed hislips. He spoke out in the solitude and the pitch darkness of the cabin, as if addressing another being awakened within his breast. 

"I shouldn't like to lose her, " he said half aloud. 

He sat unseen, apart from the sea, from his ship, isolated, as ifwithdrawn from the very current of his own existence, where such freaksas talking to himself surely had no place. His palms reposed on hisknees, he bowed his short neck and puffed heavily, surrendering toa strange sensation of weariness he was not enlightened enough torecognize for the fatigue of mental stress. 

From where he sat he could reach the door of a washstand locker. Thereshould have been a towel there. There was. Good. . . . He took it out, wiped his face, and afterwards went on rubbing his wet head. He towelledhimself with energy in the dark, and then remained motionless with thetowel on his knees. A moment passed, of a stillness so profound thatno one could have guessed there was a man sitting in that cabin. Then amurmur arose. 

"She may come out of it yet. "

When Captain MacWhirr came out on deck, which he did brusquely, asthough he had suddenly become conscious of having stayed away too long, the calm had lasted already more than fifteen minutes--long enough tomake itself intolerable even to his imagination. Jukes, motionless onthe forepart of the bridge, began to speak at once. His voice, blank andforced as though he were talking through hard-set teeth, seemed to flowaway on all sides into the darkness, deepening again upon the sea. 

"I had the wheel relieved. Hackett began to sing out that he was done. He's lying in there alongside the steering-gear with a face like death. At first I couldn't get anybody to crawl out and relieve the poor devil. That boss'n's worse than no good, I always said. Thought I would havehad to go myself and haul out one of them by the neck. "

"Ah, well, " muttered the Captain. He stood watchful by Jukes' side. 

"The second mate's in there, too, holding his head. Is he hurt, sir?"

"No--crazy, " said Captain MacWhirr, curtly. 

"Looks as if he had a tumble, though. "

"I had to give him a push, " explained the Captain. 

Jukes gave an impatient sigh. 

"It will come very sudden, " said Captain MacWhirr, "and from over there, I fancy. God only knows though. These books are only good to muddle yourhead and make you jumpy. It will be bad, and there's an end. If we onlycan steam her round in time to meet it. . . . "

A minute passed. Some of the stars winked rapidly and vanished. 

"You left them pretty safe?" began the Captain abruptly, as though thesilence were unbearable. 

"Are you thinking of the coolies, sir? I rigged lifelines all waysacross that 'tween-deck. "

"Did you? Good idea, Mr. Jukes. "

"I didn't . . . Think you cared to . . . Know, " said Jukes--the lurchingof the ship cut his speech as though somebody had been jerking himaround while he talked--"how I got on with . . . That infernal job. Wedid it. And it may not matter in the end. "

"Had to do what's fair, for all--they are only Chinamen. Give them thesame chance with ourselves--hang it all. She isn't lost yet. Bad enoughto be shut up below in a gale--"

"That's what I thought when you gave me the job, sir, " interjectedJukes, moodily. 

"--without being battered to pieces, " pursued Captain MacWhirr withrising vehemence. "Couldn't let that go on in my ship, if I knew shehadn't five minutes to live. Couldn't bear it, Mr. Jukes. "

A hollow echoing noise, like that of a shout rolling in a rocky chasm, approached the ship and went away again. The last star, blurred, enlarged, as if returning to the fiery mist of its beginning, struggledwith the colossal depth of blackness hanging over the ship--and wentout. 

"Now for it!" muttered Captain MacWhirr. "Mr. Jukes. "

"Here, sir. "

The two men were growing indistinct to each other. 

"We must trust her to go through it and come out on the other side. That's plain and straight. There's no room for Captain Wilson'sstorm-strategy here. "

"No, sir. "

"She will be smothered and swept again for hours, " mumbled the Captain. "There's not much left by this time above deck for the sea to takeaway--unless you or me. "

"Both, sir, " whispered Jukes, breathlessly. 

"You are always meeting trouble half way, Jukes, " Captain MacWhirrremonstrated quaintly. "Though it's a fact that the second mate is nogood. D'ye hear, Mr. Jukes? You would be left alone if. . . . "

Captain MacWhirr interrupted himself, and Jukes, glancing on all sides, remained silent. 

"Don't you be put out by anything, " the Captain continued, mumblingrather fast. "Keep her facing it. They may say what they like, but theheaviest seas run with the wind. Facing it--always facing it--that's theway to get through. You are a young sailor. Face it. That's enough forany man. Keep a cool head. "

"Yes, sir, " said Jukes, with a flutter of the heart. 

In the next few seconds the Captain spoke to the engine-room and got ananswer. 

For some reason Jukes experienced an access of confidence, a sensationthat came from outside like a warm breath, and made him feel equal toevery demand. The distant muttering of the darkness stole into his ears. He noted it unmoved, out of that sudden belief in himself, as a man safein a shirt of mail would watch a point. 

The ship laboured without intermission amongst the black hills of water, paying with this hard tumbling the price of her life. She rumbled inher depths, shaking a white plummet of steam into the night, andJukes' thought skimmed like a bird through the engine-room, where Mr. Rout--good man--was ready. When the rumbling ceased it seemed to himthat there was a pause of every sound, a dead pause in which CaptainMacWhirr's voice rang out startlingly. 

"What's that? A puff of wind?"--it spoke much louder than Jukes had everheard it before--"On the bow. That's right. She may come out of it yet. "

The mutter of the winds drew near apace. In the forefront could bedistinguished a drowsy waking plaint passing on, and far off the growthof a multiple clamour, marching and expanding. There was the throb asof many drums in it, a vicious rushing note, and like the chant of atramping multitude. 

Jukes could no longer see his captain distinctly. The darkness wasabsolutely piling itself upon the ship. At most he made out movements, ahint of elbows spread out, of a head thrown up. 

Captain MacWhirr was trying to do up the top button of his oilskin coatwith unwonted haste. The hurricane, with its power to madden the seas, to sink ships, to uproot trees, to overturn strong walls and dash thevery birds of the air to the ground, had found this taciturn man inits path, and, doing its utmost, had managed to wring out a few words. Before the renewed wrath of winds swooped on his ship, Captain MacWhirrwas moved to declare, in a tone of vexation, as it were: "I wouldn'tlike to lose her. "

He was spared that annoyance. 

VI

On A bright sunshiny day, with the breeze chasing her smoke far ahead, the Nan-Shan came into Fu-chau. Her arrival was at once noticed onshore, and the seamen in harbour said: "Look! Look at that steamer. What's that? Siamese--isn't she? Just look at her!"

She seemed, indeed, to have been used as a running target for thesecondary batteries of a cruiser. A hail of minor shells could not havegiven her upper works a more broken, torn, and devastated aspect: andshe had about her the worn, weary air of ships coming from the far endsof the world--and indeed with truth, for in her short passage she hadbeen very far; sighting, verily, even the coast of the Great Beyond, whence no ship ever returns to give up her crew to the dust of theearth. She was incrusted and gray with salt to the trucks of her mastsand to the top of her funnel; as though (as some facetious seaman said)"the crowd on board had fished her out somewhere from the bottom of thesea and brought her in here for salvage. " And further, excited by thefelicity of his own wit, he offered to give five pounds for her--"as shestands. "

Before she had been quite an hour at rest, a meagre little man, with ared-tipped nose and a face cast in an angry mould, landed from a sampanon the quay of the Foreign Concession, and incontinently turned to shakehis fist at her. 

A tall individual, with legs much too thin for a rotund stomach, andwith watery eyes, strolled up and remarked, "Just left her--eh? Quickwork. "

He wore a soiled suit of blue flannel with a pair of dirty cricketingshoes; a dingy gray moustache drooped from his lip, and daylight couldbe seen in two places between the rim and the crown of his hat. 

"Hallo! what are you doing here?" asked the ex-second-mate of theNan-Shan, shaking hands hurriedly. 

"Standing by for a job--chance worth taking--got a quiet hint, "explained the man with the broken hat, in jerky, apathetic wheezes. 

The second shook his fist again at the Nan-Shan. "There's a fellow therethat ain't fit to have the command of a scow, " he declared, quiveringwith passion, while the other looked about listlessly. 

"Is there?"

But he caught sight on the quay of a heavy seaman's chest, painted brownunder a fringed sailcloth cover, and lashed with new manila line. Heeyed it with awakened interest. 

"I would talk and raise trouble if it wasn't for that damned Siameseflag. Nobody to go to--or I would make it hot for him. The fraud! Toldhis chief engineer--that's another fraud for you--I had lost my nerve. The greatest lot of ignorant fools that ever sailed the seas. No! Youcan't think . . . "

"Got your money all right?" inquired his seedy acquaintance suddenly. 

"Yes. Paid me off on board, " raged the second mate. "'Get your breakfaston shore, ' says he. "

"Mean skunk!" commented the tall man, vaguely, and passed his tongue onhis lips. "What about having a drink of some sort?"

"He struck me, " hissed the second mate. 

"No! Struck! You don't say?" The man in blue began to bustle aboutsympathetically. "Can't possibly talk here. I want to know all about it. Struck--eh? Let's get a fellow to carry your chest. I know a quiet placewhere they have some bottled beer. . . . "

Mr. Jukes, who had been scanning the shore through a pair of glasses, informed the chief engineer afterwards that "our late second mate hasn'tbeen long in finding a friend. A chap looking uncommonly like a bummer. I saw them walk away together from the quay. "

The hammering and banging of the needful repairs did not disturbCaptain MacWhirr. The steward found in the letter he wrote, in a tidychart-room, passages of such absorbing interest that twice he wasnearly caught in the act. But Mrs. MacWhirr, in the drawing-room of theforty-pound house, stifled a yawn--perhaps out of self-respect--for shewas alone. 

She reclined in a plush-bottomed and gilt hammock-chair near a tiledfireplace, with Japanese fans on the mantel and a glow of coals in thegrate. Lifting her hands, she glanced wearily here and there into themany pages. It was not her fault they were so prosy, so completelyuninteresting--from "My darling wife" at the beginning, to "Your lovinghusband" at the end. She couldn't be really expected to understand allthese ship affairs. She was glad, of course, to hear from him, but shehad never asked herself why, precisely. 

". . . They are called typhoons . . . The mate did not seem to like it. . . Not in books . . . Couldn't think of letting it go on. . . . "

The paper rustled sharply. ". . . . A calm that lasted more than twentyminutes, " she read perfunctorily; and the next words her thoughtlesseyes caught, on the top of another page, were: "see you and the childrenagain. . . . " She had a movement of impatience. He was always thinkingof coming home. He had never had such a good salary before. What was thematter now?

It did not occur to her to turn back overleaf to look. She would havefound it recorded there that between 4 and 6 A. M. On December 25th, Captain MacWhirr did actually think that his ship could not possiblylive another hour in such a sea, and that he would never see his wifeand children again. Nobody was to know this (his letters got mislaidso quickly)--nobody whatever but the steward, who had been greatlyimpressed by that disclosure. So much so, that he tried to give the cooksome idea of the "narrow squeak we all had" by saying solemnly, "The oldman himself had a dam' poor opinion of our chance. "

"How do you know?" asked, contemptuously, the cook, an old soldier. "Hehasn't told you, maybe?"

"Well, he did give me a hint to that effect, " the steward brazened itout. 

"Get along with you! He will be coming to tell me next, " jeered the oldcook, over his shoulder. 

Mrs. MacWhirr glanced farther, on the alert. ". . . Do what's fair. . . Miserable objects . . . . Only three, with a broken leg each, and one. . . Thought had better keep the matter quiet . . . Hope to have donethe fair thing. . . . "

She let fall her hands. No: there was nothing more about coming home. Must have been merely expressing a pious wish. Mrs. MacWhirr's mind wasset at ease, and a black marble clock, priced by the local jeweller at3L. 18s. 6d. , had a discreet stealthy tick. 

The door flew open, and a girl in the long-legged, short-frocked periodof existence, flung into the room. 

A lot of colourless, rather lanky hair was scattered over her shoulders. Seeing her mother, she stood still, and directed her pale prying eyesupon the letter. 

"From father, " murmured Mrs. MacWhirr. "What have you done with yourribbon?"

The girl put her hands up to her head and pouted. 

"He's well, " continued Mrs. MacWhirr languidly. "At least I think so. He never says. " She had a little laugh. The girl's face expressed awandering indifference, and Mrs. MacWhirr surveyed her with fond pride. 

"Go and get your hat, " she said after a while. "I am going out to dosome shopping. There is a sale at Linom's. "

"Oh, how jolly!" uttered the child, impressively, in unexpectedly gravevibrating tones, and bounded out of the room. 

It was a fine afternoon, with a gray sky and dry sidewalks. Outside thedraper's Mrs. MacWhirr smiled upon a woman in a black mantle of generousproportions armoured in jet and crowned with flowers blooming falselyabove a bilious matronly countenance. They broke into a swift littlebabble of greetings and exclamations both together, very hurried, as ifthe street were ready to yawn open and swallow all that pleasure beforeit could be expressed. 

Behind them the high glass doors were kept on the swing. People couldn'tpass, men stood aside waiting patiently, and Lydia was absorbed inpoking the end of her parasol between the stone flags. Mrs. MacWhirrtalked rapidly. 

"Thank you very much. He's not coming home yet. Of course it's very sadto have him away, but it's such a comfort to know he keeps so well. "Mrs. MacWhirr drew breath. "The climate there agrees with him, " sheadded, beamingly, as if poor MacWhirr had been away touring in China forthe sake of his health. 

Neither was the chief engineer coming home yet. Mr. Rout knew too wellthe value of a good billet. 

"Solomon says wonders will never cease, " cried Mrs. Rout joyously at theold lady in her armchair by the fire. Mr. Rout's mother moved slightly, her withered hands lying in black half-mittens on her lap. 

The eyes of the engineer's wife fairly danced on the paper. "Thatcaptain of the ship he is in--a rather simple man, you remember, mother?--has done something rather clever, Solomon says. "

"Yes, my dear, " said the old woman meekly, sitting with bowed silveryhead, and that air of inward stillness characteristic of very oldpeople who seem lost in watching the last flickers of life. "I think Iremember. "

Solomon Rout, Old Sol, Father Sol, the Chief, "Rout, good man"--Mr. Rout, the condescending and paternal friend of youth, had been the babyof her many children--all dead by this time. And she remembered him bestas a boy of ten--long before he went away to serve his apprenticeship insome great engineering works in the North. She had seen so little of himsince, she had gone through so many years, that she had now to retraceher steps very far back to recognize him plainly in the mist of time. Sometimes it seemed that her daughter-in-law was talking of some strangeman. 

Mrs. Rout junior was disappointed. "H'm. H'm. " She turned the page. "Howprovoking! He doesn't say what it is. Says I couldn't understand howmuch there was in it. Fancy! What could it be so very clever? What awretched man not to tell us!"

She read on without further remark soberly, and at last sat lookinginto the fire. The chief wrote just a word or two of the typhoon;but something had moved him to express an increased longing for thecompanionship of the jolly woman. "If it hadn't been that mother must belooked after, I would send you your passage-money to-day. You could setup a small house out here. I would have a chance to see you sometimesthen. We are not growing younger. . . . "

"He's well, mother, " sighed Mrs. Rout, rousing herself. 

"He always was a strong healthy boy, " said the old woman, placidly. 

But Mr. Jukes' account was really animated and very full. His friend inthe Western Ocean trade imparted it freely to the other officers of hisliner. "A chap I know writes to me about an extraordinary affair thathappened on board his ship in that typhoon--you know--that we read ofin the papers two months ago. It's the funniest thing! Just see foryourself what he says. I'll show you his letter. "

There were phrases in it calculated to give the impression oflight-hearted, indomitable resolution. Jukes had written them in goodfaith, for he felt thus when he wrote. He described with lurid effectthe scenes in the 'tween-deck. ". . . It struck me in a flash thatthose confounded Chinamen couldn't tell we weren't a desperate kind ofrobbers. 'Tisn't good to part the Chinaman from his money if he is thestronger party. We need have been desperate indeed to go thieving insuch weather, but what could these beggars know of us? So, withoutthinking of it twice, I got the hands away in a jiffy. Our work wasdone--that the old man had set his heart on. We cleared out withoutstaying to inquire how they felt. I am convinced that if they had notbeen so unmercifully shaken, and afraid--each individual one of them--to stand up, we would have been torn to pieces. Oh! It was prettycomplete, I can tell you; and you may run to and fro across the Pond tothe end of time before you find yourself with such a job on your hands. "

After this he alluded professionally to the damage done to the ship, andwent on thus:

"It was when the weather quieted down that the situation becameconfoundedly delicate. It wasn't made any better by us having beenlately transferred to the Siamese flag; though the skipper can't seethat it makes any difference--'as long as we are on board'--he says. There are feelings that this man simply hasn't got--and there's an endof it. You might just as well try to make a bedpost understand. Butapart from this it is an infernally lonely state for a ship to be goingabout the China seas with no proper consuls, not even a gunboat of herown anywhere, nor a body to go to in case of some trouble. 

"My notion was to keep these Johnnies under hatches for another fifteenhours or so; as we weren't much farther than that from Fu-chau. We wouldfind there, most likely, some sort of a man-of-war, and once underher guns we were safe enough; for surely any skipper of aman-of-war--English, French or Dutch--would see white men through asfar as row on board goes. We could get rid of them and their moneyafterwards by delivering them to their Mandarin or Taotai, or whateverthey call these chaps in goggles you see being carried about insedan-chairs through their stinking streets. 

"The old man wouldn't see it somehow. He wanted to keep the matterquiet. He got that notion into his head, and a steam windlass couldn'tdrag it out of him. He wanted as little fuss made as possible, for thesake of the ship's name and for the sake of the owners--'for the sake ofall concerned, ' says he, looking at me very hard. 

"It made me angry hot. Of course you couldn't keep a thing like thatquiet; but the chests had been secured in the usual manner and were safeenough for any earthly gale, while this had been an altogether fiendishbusiness I couldn't give you even an idea of. 

"Meantime, I could hardly keep on my feet. None of us had a spell ofany sort for nearly thirty hours, and there the old man sat rubbing hischin, rubbing the top of his head, and so bothered he didn't even thinkof pulling his long boots off. 

"'I hope, sir, ' says I, 'you won't be letting them out on deck before wemake ready for them in some shape or other. ' Not, mind you, that I feltvery sanguine about controlling these beggars if they meant to takecharge. A trouble with a cargo of Chinamen is no child's play. I wasdam' tired, too. 'I wish, ' said I, 'you would let us throw the wholelot of these dollars down to them and leave them to fight it out amongstthemselves, while we get a rest. '

"'Now you talk wild, Jukes, ' says he, looking up in his slow way thatmakes you ache all over, somehow. 'We must plan out something that wouldbe fair to all parties. '

"I had no end of work on hand, as you may imagine, so I set the handsgoing, and then I thought I would turn in a bit. I hadn't been asleep inmy bunk ten minutes when in rushes the steward and begins to pull at myleg. 

"'For God's sake, Mr. Jukes, come out! Come on deck quick, sir. Oh, docome out!'

"The fellow scared all the sense out of me. I didn't know what hadhappened: another hurricane--or what. Could hear no wind. 

"'The Captain's letting them out. Oh, he is letting them out! Jump ondeck, sir, and save us. The chief engineer has just run below for hisrevolver. '

"That's what I understood the fool to say. However, Father Rout swearshe went in there only to get a clean pocket-handkerchief. Anyhow, I madeone jump into my trousers and flew on deck aft. There was certainly agood deal of noise going on forward of the bridge. Four of the handswith the boss'n were at work abaft. I passed up to them some of therifles all the ships on the China coast carry in the cabin, and led themon the bridge. On the way I ran against Old Sol, looking startled andsucking at an unlighted cigar. 

"'Come along, ' I shouted to him. 

"We charged, the seven of us, up to the chart-room. All was over. Therestood the old man with his sea-boots still drawn up to the hips andin shirt-sleeves--got warm thinking it out, I suppose. Bun Hin's dandyclerk at his elbow, as dirty as a sweep, was still green in the face. Icould see directly I was in for something. 

"'What the devil are these monkey tricks, Mr. Jukes?' asks the old man, as angry as ever he could be. I tell you frankly it made me lose mytongue. 'For God's sake, Mr. Jukes, ' says he, 'do take away these riflesfrom the men. Somebody's sure to get hurt before long if you don't. Damme, if this ship isn't worse than Bedlam! Look sharp now. I wantyou up here to help me and Bun Hin's Chinaman to count that money. Youwouldn't mind lending a hand, too, Mr. Rout, now you are here. The moreof us the better. '

"He had settled it all in his mind while I was having a snooze. Had webeen an English ship, or only going to land our cargo of coolies in anEnglish port, like Hong-Kong, for instance, there would have been noend of inquiries and bother, claims for damages and so on. But theseChinamen know their officials better than we do. 

"The hatches had been taken off already, and they were all on deck aftera night and a day down below. It made you feel queer to see so manygaunt, wild faces together. The beggars stared about at the sky, at thesea, at the ship, as though they had expected the whole thing to havebeen blown to pieces. And no wonder! They had had a doing that wouldhave shaken the soul out of a white man. But then they say a Chinamanhas no soul. He has, though, something about him that is deuced tough. There was a fellow (amongst others of the badly hurt) who had had hiseye all but knocked out. It stood out of his head the size of half ahen's egg. This would have laid out a white man on his back for a month:and yet there was that chap elbowing here and there in the crowd andtalking to the others as if nothing had been the matter. They made agreat hubbub amongst themselves, and whenever the old man showed hisbald head on the foreside of the bridge, they would all leave off jawingand look at him from below. 

"It seems that after he had done his thinking he made that Bun Hin'sfellow go down and explain to them the only way they could get theirmoney back. He told me afterwards that, all the coolies having worked inthe same place and for the same length of time, he reckoned he would bedoing the fair thing by them as near as possible if he shared all thecash we had picked up equally among the lot. You couldn't tell one man'sdollars from another's, he said, and if you asked each man how muchmoney he brought on board he was afraid they would lie, and he wouldfind himself a long way short. I think he was right there. As to givingup the money to any Chinese official he could scare up in Fu-chau, hesaid he might just as well put the lot in his own pocket at once for allthe good it would be to them. I suppose they thought so, too. 

"We finished the distribution before dark. It was rather a sight: thesea running high, the ship a wreck to look at, these Chinamen staggeringup on the bridge one by one for their share, and the old man stillbooted, and in his shirt-sleeves, busy paying out at the chartroom door, perspiring like anything, and now and then coming down sharp on myselfor Father Rout about one thing or another not quite to his mind. He tookthe share of those who were disabled himself to them on the No. 2 hatch. There were three dollars left over, and these went to the three mostdamaged coolies, one to each. We turned-to afterwards, and shovelledout on deck heaps of wet rags, all sorts of fragments of things withoutshape, and that you couldn't give a name to, and let them settle theownership themselves. 

"This certainly is coming as near as can be to keeping the thing quietfor the benefit of all concerned. What's your opinion, you pamperedmail-boat swell? The old chief says that this was plainly the only thingthat could be done. The skipper remarked to me the other day, 'There arethings you find nothing about in books. ' I think that he got out of itvery well for such a stupid man. "

[The other stories included in this volume ("Amy Foster, " "Falk: AReminiscence, " and "To-morrow") being already available in anothervolume, have not been entered here. ]