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, afte
r 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.
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