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.
T
he 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.
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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.
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