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diff --git a/1142-0.txt b/1142-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b6edf97 --- /dev/null +++ b/1142-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3324 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1142 *** + +[The other stories included in this volume (“Amy Foster,” “Falk: A +Reminiscence,” and “To-morrow”) being already available in another +volume, have not been entered here.] + + + +TYPHOON + +BY JOSEPH CONRAD + + + +Far as the mariner on highest mast Can see all around upon the calmed +vast, So wide was Neptune's hall . . . -- KEATS + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +The main characteristic of this volume consists in this, that all the +stories composing it belong not only to the same period but have been +written one after another in the order in which they appear in the book. + +The period is that which follows on my connection with Blackwood's +Magazine. I had just finished writing “The End of the Tether” and was +casting about for some subject which could be developed in a shorter +form than the tales in the volume of “Youth” when the instance of a +steamship full of returning coolies from Singapore to some port in +northern China occurred to my recollection. Years before I had heard +it being talked about in the East as a recent occurrence. It was for us +merely one subject of conversation amongst many others of the kind. Men +earning their bread in any very specialized occupation will talk shop, +not only because it is the most vital interest of their lives but also +because they have not much knowledge of other subjects. They have never +had the time to get acquainted with them. Life, for most of us, is not +so much a hard as an exacting taskmaster. + +I never met anybody personally concerned in this affair, the interest of +which for us was, of course, not the bad weather but the extraordinary +complication brought into the ship's life at a moment of exceptional +stress by the human element below her deck. Neither was the story itself +ever enlarged upon in my hearing. In that company each of us could +imagine easily what the whole thing was like. The financial difficulty +of it, presenting also a human problem, was solved by a mind much too +simple to be perplexed by anything in the world except men's idle talk +for which it was not adapted. + +From the first the mere anecdote, the mere statement I might say, that +such a thing had happened on the high seas, appeared to me a sufficient +subject for meditation. Yet it was but a bit of a sea yarn after all. I +felt that to bring out its deeper significance which was quite apparent +to me, something other, something more was required; a leading motive +that would harmonize all these violent noises, and a point of view that +would put all that elemental fury into its proper place. + +What was needed of course was Captain MacWhirr. Directly I perceived him +I could see that he was the man for the situation. I don't mean to +say that I ever saw Captain MacWhirr in the flesh, or had ever come in +contact with his literal mind and his dauntless temperament. MacWhirr is +not an acquaintance of a few hours, or a few weeks, or a few months. He +is the product of twenty years of life. My own life. Conscious invention +had little to do with him. If it is true that Captain MacWhirr never +walked and breathed on this earth (which I find for my part extremely +difficult to believe) I can also assure my readers that he is perfectly +authentic. I may venture to assert the same of every aspect of the +story, while I confess that the particular typhoon of the tale was not a +typhoon of my actual experience. + +At its first appearance “Typhoon,” the story, was classed by some +critics as a deliberately intended storm-piece. Others picked out +MacWhirr, in whom they perceived a definite symbolic intention. Neither +was exclusively my intention. Both the typhoon and Captain MacWhirr +presented themselves to me as the necessities of the deep conviction +with which I approached the subject of the story. It was their +opportunity. It was also my opportunity; and it would be vain to +discourse about what I made of it in a handful of pages, since the pages +themselves are here, between the covers of this volume, to speak for +themselves. + +This is a belated reflection. If it had occurred to me before it would +have perhaps done away with the existence of this Author's Note; for, +indeed, the same remark applies to every story in this volume. None +of them are stories of experience in the absolute sense of the word. +Experience in them is but the canvas of the attempted picture. Each of +them has its more than one intention. With each the question is what the +writer has done with his opportunity; and each answers the question for +itself in words which, if I may say so without undue solemnity, were +written with a conscientious regard for the truth of my own sensations. +And each of those stories, to mean something, must justify itself in its +own way to the conscience of each successive reader. + +“Falk”--the second story in the volume--offended the delicacy of one +critic at least by certain peculiarities of its subject. But what is the +subject of “Falk”? I personally do not feel so very certain about it. He +who 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 on +the events but on their effect upon the persons in the tale. But in +everything I have written there is always one invariable intention, and +that is to capture the reader's attention, by securing his interest and +enlisting his sympathies for the matter in hand, whatever it may be, +within the limits of the visible world and within the boundaries of +human emotions. + +I may safely say that Falk is absolutely true to my experience of +certain straightforward characters combining a perfectly natural +ruthlessness with a certain amount of moral delicacy. Falk obeys the law +of self-preservation without the slightest misgivings as to his right, +but at a crucial turn of that ruthlessly preserved life he will not +condescend to dodge the truth. As he is presented as sensitive enough to +be affected permanently by a certain unusual experience, that experience +had to be set by me before the reader vividly; but it is not the subject +of the tale. If we go by mere facts then the subject is Falk's attempt +to get married; in which the narrator of the tale finds himself +unexpectedly involved both on its ruthless and its delicate side. + +“Falk” shares with one other of my stories (“The Return” in the “Tales +of Unrest” volume) the distinction of never having been serialized. I +think the copy was shown to the editor of some magazine who rejected it +indignantly on the sole ground that “the girl never says anything.” This +is perfectly true. From first to last Hermann's niece utters no word in +the tale--and it is not because she is dumb, but for the simple reason +that whenever she happens to come under the observation of the narrator +she has either no occasion or is too profoundly moved to speak. The +editor, who obviously had read the story, might have perceived that for +himself. Apparently he did not, and I refrained from pointing out the +impossibility to him because, since he did not venture to say that “the +girl” did not live, I felt no concern at his indignation. + +All the other stories were serialized. The “Typhoon” appeared in the +early numbers of the Pall Mall Magazine, then under the direction of the +late Mr. Halkett. It was on that occasion, too, that I saw for the first +time my conceptions rendered by an artist in another medium. Mr. Maurice +Grieffenhagen knew how to combine in his illustrations the effect of his +own most distinguished personal vision with an absolute fidelity to the +inspiration of the writer. “Amy Foster” was published in The Illustrated +London News with a fine drawing of Amy on her day out giving tea to the +children at her home, in a hat with a big feather. “To-morrow” appeared +first in the Pall Mall Magazine. Of that story I will only say that +it struck many people by its adaptability to the stage and that I was +induced to dramatize it under the title of “One Day More”; up to the +present my only effort in that direction. I may also add that each of +the four stories on their appearance in book form was picked out on +various grounds as the “best of the lot” by different critics, who +reviewed the volume with a warmth of appreciation and understanding, a +sympathetic insight and a friendliness of expression for which I cannot +be sufficiently grateful. + + +1919. J. C. + + + +TYPHOON + +I + +Captain MacWhirr, of the steamer Nan-Shan, had a physiognomy that, in +the order of material appearances, was the exact counterpart of his +mind: 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, was +bashfulness; because he would sit, in business offices ashore, sunburnt +and smiling faintly, with downcast eyes. When he raised them, they were +perceived to be direct in their glance and of blue colour. His hair was +fair and extremely fine, clasping from temple to temple the bald dome +of his skull in a clamp as of fluffy silk. The hair of his face, on the +contrary, carroty and flaming, resembled a growth of copper wire clipped +short to the line of the lip; while, no matter how close he shaved, +fiery metallic gleams passed, when he moved his head, over the +surface of his cheeks. He was rather below the medium height, a bit +round-shouldered, and so sturdy of limb that his clothes always looked a +shade too tight for his arms and legs. As if unable to grasp what is due +to the difference of latitudes, he wore a brown bowler hat, a complete +suit of a brownish hue, and clumsy black boots. These harbour togs gave +to his thick figure an air of stiff and uncouth smartness. A thin silver +watch chain looped his waistcoat, and he never left his ship for the +shore without clutching in his powerful, hairy fist an elegant umbrella +of the very best quality, but generally unrolled. Young Jukes, the chief +mate, attending his commander to the gangway, would sometimes venture +to say, with the greatest gentleness, “Allow me, sir”--and possessing +himself of the umbrella deferentially, would elevate the ferule, shake +the folds, twirl a neat furl in a jiffy, and hand it back; going through +the performance with a face of such portentous gravity, that Mr. Solomon +Rout, the chief engineer, smoking his morning cigar over the skylight, +would turn away his head in order to hide a smile. “Oh! aye! The blessed +gamp. . . . 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 same +cause he was not in the least conceited. It is your imaginative superior +who is touchy, overbearing, and difficult to please; but every ship +Captain MacWhirr commanded was the floating abode of harmony and peace. +It was, in truth, as impossible for him to take a flight of fancy as +it would be for a watchmaker to put together a chronometer with nothing +except a two-pound hammer and a whip-saw in the way of tools. Yet the +uninteresting lives of men so entirely given to the actuality of the +bare existence have their mysterious side. It was impossible in Captain +MacWhirr's case, for instance, to understand what under heaven could +have induced that perfectly satisfactory son of a petty grocer in +Belfast to run away to sea. And yet he had done that very thing at the +age of fifteen. It was enough, when you thought it over, to give you the +idea of an immense, potent, and invisible hand thrust into the ant-heap +of the earth, laying hold of shoulders, knocking heads together, and +setting the unconscious faces of the multitude towards inconceivable +goals and in undreamt-of directions. + +His father never really forgave him for this undutiful stupidity. “We +could have got on without him,” he used to say later on, “but there's +the business. And he an only son, too!” His mother wept very much after +his disappearance. As it had never occurred to him to leave word behind, +he was mourned over for dead till, after eight months, his first letter +arrived from Talcahuano. It was short, and contained the statement: +“We had very fine weather on our passage out.” But evidently, in the +writer's mind, the only important intelligence was to the effect that +his captain had, on the very day of writing, entered him regularly on +the ship's articles as Ordinary Seaman. “Because I can do the work,” he +explained. The mother again wept copiously, while the remark, “Tom's an +ass,” expressed the emotions of the father. He was a corpulent man, with +a gift for sly chaffing, which to the end of his life he exercised +in his intercourse with his son, a little pityingly, as if upon a +half-witted person. + +MacWhirr's visits to his home were necessarily rare, and in the course +of years he despatched other letters to his parents, informing them of +his successive promotions and of his movements upon the vast earth. In +these missives could be found sentences like this: “The heat here is +very great.” Or: “On Christmas day at 4 P. M. we fell in with some +icebergs.” The old people ultimately became acquainted with a good +many names of ships, and with the names of the skippers who commanded +them--with the names of Scots and English shipowners--with the names +of seas, oceans, straits, promontories--with outlandish names of +lumber-ports, of rice-ports, of cotton-ports--with the names of +islands--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 name +pretty. And then they died. + +The great day of MacWhirr's marriage came in due course, following +shortly upon the great day when he got his first command. + +All these events had taken place many years before the morning when, in +the chart-room of the steamer Nan-Shan, he stood confronted by the +fall of a barometer he had no reason to distrust. The fall--taking into +account the excellence of the instrument, the time of the year, and +the ship's position on the terrestrial globe--was of a nature ominously +prophetic; but the red face of the man betrayed no sort of inward +disturbance. Omens were as nothing to him, and he was unable to discover +the message of a prophecy till the fulfilment had brought it home to his +very door. “That's a fall, and no mistake,” he thought. “There must be +some uncommonly dirty weather knocking about.” + +The Nan-Shan was on her way from the southward to the treaty port of +Fu-chau, with some cargo in her lower holds, and two hundred Chinese +coolies returning to their village homes in the province of Fo-kien, +after a few years of work in various tropical colonies. The morning was +fine, the oily sea heaved without a sparkle, and there was a queer white +misty patch in the sky like a halo of the sun. The fore-deck, packed +with 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 stared +over the rail; some, drawing water over the side, sluiced each other; +a few slept on hatches, while several small parties of six sat on their +heels surrounding iron trays with plates of rice and tiny teacups; and +every single Celestial of them was carrying with him all he had in the +world--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 of +conventional value, and a small hoard of silver dollars, toiled for in +coal lighters, won in gambling-houses or in petty trading, grubbed out +of earth, sweated out in mines, on railway lines, in deadly jungle, +under heavy burdens--amassed patiently, guarded with care, cherished +fiercely. + +A cross swell had set in from the direction of Formosa Channel about ten +o'clock, without disturbing these passengers much, because the Nan-Shan, +with her flat bottom, rolling chocks on bilges, and great breadth of +beam, had the reputation of an exceptionally steady ship in a sea-way. +Mr. Jukes, in moments of expansion on shore, would proclaim loudly +that the “old girl was as good as she was pretty.” It would never have +occurred to Captain MacWhirr to express his favourable opinion so loud +or in terms so fanciful. + +She was a good ship, undoubtedly, and not old either. She had been built +in Dumbarton less than three years before, to the order of a firm of +merchants in Siam--Messrs. Sigg and Son. When she lay afloat, finished +in every detail and ready to take up the work of her life, the builders +contemplated her with pride. + +“Sigg has asked us for a reliable skipper to take her out,” remarked one +of the partners; and the other, after reflecting for a while, said: +“I think MacWhirr is ashore just at present.” “Is he? Then wire him +at once. He's the very man,” declared the senior, without a moment's +hesitation. + +Next morning MacWhirr stood before them unperturbed, having travelled +from London by the midnight express after a sudden but undemonstrative +parting with his wife. She was the daughter of a superior couple who had +seen better days. + +“We had better be going together over the ship, Captain,” said the +senior partner; and the three men started to view the perfections of the +Nan-Shan from stem to stern, and from her keelson to the trucks of her +two stumpy pole-masts. + +Captain MacWhirr had begun by taking off his coat, which he hung on the +end of a steam windless embodying all the latest improvements. + +“My uncle wrote of you favourably by yesterday's mail to our good +friends--Messrs. Sigg, you know--and doubtless they'll continue you out +there in command,” said the junior partner. “You'll be able to boast of +being 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 of +a distant eventuality could appeal no more than the beauty of a wide +landscape to a purblind tourist; and his eyes happening at the moment to +be at rest upon the lock of the cabin door, he walked up to it, full of +purpose, and began to rattle the handle vigorously, while he observed, +in his low, earnest voice, “You can't trust the workmen nowadays. A +brand-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?” asked +the nephew, with faint contempt. + +“I admit he has nothing of your fancy skipper about him, if that's what +you mean,” said the elder man, curtly. “Is the foreman of the joiners +on the Nan-Shan outside? . . . Come in, Bates. How is it that you let +Tait's people put us off with a defective lock on the cabin door? The +Captain 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 the +Nan-Shan steamed out to the East, without MacWhirr having offered any +further remark as to her fittings, or having been heard to utter a +single 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 little +occasion to talk. There were matters of duty, of course--directions, +orders, and so on; but the past being to his mind done with, and the +future not there yet, the more general actualities of the day required +no comment--because facts can speak for themselves with overwhelming +precision. + +Old Mr. Sigg liked a man of few words, and one that “you could be sure +would not try to improve upon his instructions.” MacWhirr satisfying +these requirements, was continued in command of the Nan-Shan, and +applied 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. Sigg +judged it expedient to transfer her to the Siamese flag. + +At the news of the contemplated transfer Jukes grew restless, as if +under a sense of personal affront. He went about grumbling to himself, +and uttering short scornful laughs. “Fancy having a ridiculous +Noah's Ark elephant in the ensign of one's ship,” he said once at the +engine-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 his +throat 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-Shan +Jukes stood looking at it bitterly from the bridge. He struggled with +his feelings for a while, and then remarked, “Queer flag for a man to +sail under, sir.” + +“What's the matter with the flag?” inquired Captain MacWhirr. “Seems all +right to me.” And he walked across to the end of the bridge to have a +good look. + +“Well, it looks queer to me,” burst out Jukes, greatly exasperated, and +flung off the bridge. + +Captain MacWhirr was amazed at these manners. After a while he stepped +quietly into the chart-room, and opened his International Signal +Code-book at the plate where the flags of all the nations are correctly +figured in gaudy rows. He ran his finger over them, and when he came to +Siam he contemplated with great attention the red field and the white +elephant. Nothing could be more simple; but to make sure he brought the +book out on the bridge for the purpose of comparing the coloured drawing +with the real thing at the flagstaff astern. When next Jukes, who was +carrying 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-locker +and jerking therefrom viciously a spare lead-line. + +“No. I looked up the book. Length twice the breadth and the elephant +exactly in the middle. I thought the people ashore would know how to +make the local flag. Stands to reason. You were wrong, Jukes. . . .” + +“Well, sir,” began Jukes, getting up excitedly, “all I can say--” He +fumbled for the end of the coil of line with trembling hands. + +“That's all right.” Captain MacWhirr soothed him, sitting heavily on a +little canvas folding-stool he greatly affected. “All you have to do is +to take care they don't hoist the elephant upside-down before they get +quite used to it.” + +Jukes flung the new lead-line over on the fore-deck with a loud “Here +you are, bo'ss'en--don't forget to wet it thoroughly,” and turned with +immense resolution towards his commander; but Captain MacWhirr spread +his elbows on the bridge-rail comfortably. + +“Because it would be, I suppose, understood as a signal of distress,” he +went on. “What do you think? That elephant there, I take it, stands for +something in the nature of the Union Jack in the flag. . . .” + +“Does it!” yelled Jukes, so that every head on the Nan-Shan's decks +looked 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 Father +Rout), from finding himself almost invariably the tallest man on board +every ship he joined, had acquired the habit of a stooping, leisurely +condescension. His hair was scant and sandy, his flat cheeks were pale, +his bony wrists and long scholarly hands were pale, too, as though he +had lived all his life in the shade. + +He smiled from on high at Jukes, and went on smoking and glancing about +quietly, in the manner of a kind uncle lending an ear to the tale of an +excited 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 harsh +buzz 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 cargo +chains groaned in the gins, clinked on coamings, rattled over the +side; and the whole ship quivered, with her long gray flanks smoking in +wreaths of steam. “No,” cried Jukes, “I didn't. What's the good? I might +just as well fling my resignation at this bulkhead. I don't believe you +can 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 an +umbrella. + +The master of the Nan-Shan, speaking just audibly and gazing at his +boots as his manner was, remarked that it would be necessary to call +at Fu-chau this trip, and desired Mr. Rout to have steam up to-morrow +afternoon at one o'clock sharp. He pushed back his hat to wipe his +forehead, observing at the same time that he hated going ashore +anyhow; while overtopping him Mr. Rout, without deigning a word, smoked +austerely, 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 put +down there. The Bun Hin Company were sending that lot home. Twenty-five +bags of rice would be coming off in a sampan directly, for stores. All +seven-years'-men they were, said Captain MacWhirr, with a camphor-wood +chest to every man. The carpenter should be set to work nailing +three-inch battens along the deck below, fore and aft, to keep these +boxes 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 far +as Fu-chau--a sort of interpreter he would be. Bun Hin's clerk he +was, and wanted to have a look at the space. Jukes had better take him +forward. “D'ye hear, Jukes?” + +Jukes took care to punctuate these instructions in proper places with +the obligatory “Yes, sir,” ejaculated without enthusiasm. His brusque +“Come along, John; make look see” set the Chinaman in motion at his +heels. + +“Wanchee look see, all same look see can do,” said Jukes, who having no +talent for foreign languages mangled the very pidgin-English cruelly. He +pointed at the open hatch. “Catchee number one piecie place to sleep in. +Eh?” + +He was gruff, as became his racial superiority, but not unfriendly. The +Chinaman, 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'ee +same fine weather, one piecie coolie-man come topside,” he pursued, +warming up imaginatively. “Make so--Phooooo!” He expanded his chest and +blew out his cheeks. “Savee, John? Breathe--fresh air. Good. Eh? Washee +him piecie pants, chow-chow top-side--see, John?” + +With his mouth and hands he made exuberant motions of eating rice and +washing clothes; and the Chinaman, who concealed his distrust of this +pantomime under a collected demeanour tinged by a gentle and refined +melancholy, glanced out of his almond eyes from Jukes to the hatch and +back again. “Velly good,” he murmured, in a disconsolate undertone, and +hastened smoothly along the decks, dodging obstacles in his course. He +disappeared, ducking low under a sling of ten dirty gunny-bags full of +some costly merchandise and exhaling a repulsive smell. + +Captain MacWhirr meantime had gone on the bridge, and into the +chart-room, where a letter, commenced two days before, awaited +termination. These long letters began with the words, “My darling wife,” + and the steward, between the scrubbing of the floors and the dusting +of chronometer-boxes, snatched at every opportunity to read them. They +interested him much more than they possibly could the woman for whose +eye they were intended; and this for the reason that they related in +minute 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 house +in a northern suburb to which these pages were addressed had a bit of +garden before the bow-windows, a deep porch of good appearance, +coloured glass with imitation lead frame in the front door. He paid +five-and-forty pounds a year for it, and did not think the rent too +high, because Mrs. MacWhirr (a pretentious person with a scraggy +neck and a disdainful manner) was admittedly ladylike, and in the +neighbourhood considered as “quite superior.” The only secret of her +life was her abject terror of the time when her husband would come home +to stay for good. Under the same roof there dwelt also a daughter called +Lydia and a son, Tom. These two were but slightly acquainted with their +father. Mainly, they knew him as a rare but privileged visitor, who of +an 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 boy +was frankly and utterly indifferent in a straightforward, delightful, +unaffected way manly boys have. + +And Captain MacWhirr wrote home from the coast of China twelve times +every year, desiring quaintly to be “remembered to the children,” and +subscribing himself “your loving husband,” as calmly as if the words so +long 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 of +every-day, eloquent facts, such as islands, sand-banks, reefs, swift and +changeable currents--tangled facts that nevertheless speak to a seaman +in clear and definite language. Their speech appealed to Captain +MacWhirr's sense of realities so forcibly that he had given up his +state-room below and practically lived all his days on the bridge of +his ship, often having his meals sent up, and sleeping at night in the +chart-room. And he indited there his home letters. Each of them, without +exception, contained the phrase, “The weather has been very fine this +trip,” or some other form of a statement to that effect. And this +statement, too, in its wonderful persistence, was of the same perfect +accuracy as all the others they contained. + +Mr. Rout likewise wrote letters; only no one on board knew how chatty he +could be pen in hand, because the chief engineer had enough imagination +to keep his desk locked. His wife relished his style greatly. They were +a childless couple, and Mrs. Rout, a big, high-bosomed, jolly woman of +forty, shared with Mr. Rout's toothless and venerable mother a little +cottage near Teddington. She would run over her correspondence, at +breakfast, with lively eyes, and scream out interesting passages in a +joyous voice at the deaf old lady, prefacing each extract by the +warning shout, “Solomon says!” She had the trick of firing off +Solomon's utterances also upon strangers, astonishing them easily by the +unfamiliar text and the unexpectedly jocular vein of these quotations. +On the day the new curate called for the first time at the cottage, she +found occasion to remark, “As Solomon says: 'the engineers that go down +to the sea in ships behold the wonders of sailor nature';” when a change +in the visitor's countenance made her stop and stare. + +“Solomon. . . . Oh! . . . Mrs. Rout,” stuttered the young man, very red +in the face, “I must say . . . I don't. . . .” + +“He's my husband,” she announced in a great shout, throwing herself +back in the chair. Perceiving the joke, she laughed immoderately with a +handkerchief to her eyes, while he sat wearing a forced smile, and, +from his inexperience of jolly women, fully persuaded that she must +be deplorably insane. They were excellent friends afterwards; for, +absolving her from irreverent intention, he came to think she was a +very worthy person indeed; and he learned in time to receive without +flinching other scraps of Solomon's wisdom. + +“For my part,” Solomon was reported by his wife to have said once, “give +me the dullest ass for a skipper before a rogue. There is a way to +take a fool; but a rogue is smart and slippery.” This was an airy +generalization drawn from the particular case of Captain MacWhirr's +honesty, which, in itself, had the heavy obviousness of a lump of clay. +On the other hand, Mr. Jukes, unable to generalize, unmarried, and +unengaged, was in the habit of opening his heart after another fashion +to an old chum and former shipmate, actually serving as second officer +on 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 extolled +the sky, the seas, the ships, and the easy life of the Far East. The +Nan-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. . . . All +the chaps of the black-squad are as decent as they make that kind, and +old Sol, the Chief, is a dry stick. We are good friends. As to our old +man, you could not find a quieter skipper. Sometimes you would think he +hadn't sense enough to see anything wrong. And yet it isn't that. Can't +be. He has been in command for a good few years now. He doesn't do +anything actually foolish, and gets his ship along all right without +worrying anybody. I believe he hasn't brains enough to enjoy kicking +up a row. I don't take advantage of him. I would scorn it. Outside the +routine of duty he doesn't seem to understand more than half of what you +tell him. We get a laugh out of this at times; but it is dull, too, to +be with a man like this--in the long-run. Old Sol says he hasn't much +conversation. Conversation! O Lord! He never talks. The other day I had +been yarning under the bridge with one of the engineers, and he must +have heard us. When I came up to take my watch, he steps out of the +chart-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 regular +performance. By-and-by he says: 'Was that you talking just now in the +port alleyway?' 'Yes, sir.' 'With the third engineer?' 'Yes, sir.' He +walks off to starboard, and sits under the dodger on a little campstool +of his, and for half an hour perhaps he makes no sound, except that I +heard him sneeze once. Then after a while I hear him getting up over +there, and he strolls across to port, where I was. 'I can't understand +what you can find to talk about,' says he. 'Two solid hours. I am not +blaming you. I see people ashore at it all day long, and then in the +evening they sit down and keep at it over the drinks. Must be saying the +same 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 worth +while. But it isn't. He's so jolly innocent that if you were to put your +thumb to your nose and wave your fingers at him he would only wonder +gravely to himself what got into you. He told me once quite simply that +he found it very difficult to make out what made people always act so +queerly. 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 the +fulness of his heart and the liveliness of his fancy. + +He had expressed his honest opinion. It was not worthwhile trying to +impress a man of that sort. If the world had been full of such men, life +would have probably appeared to Jukes an unentertaining and unprofitable +business. He was not alone in his opinion. The sea itself, as if sharing +Mr. Jukes' good-natured forbearance, had never put itself out to startle +the silent man, who seldom looked up, and wandered innocently over +the waters with the only visible purpose of getting food, raiment, +and house-room for three people ashore. Dirty weather he had known, of +course. He had been made wet, uncomfortable, tired in the usual way, +felt at the time and presently forgotten. So that upon the whole he had +been justified in reporting fine weather at home. But he had never been +given a glimpse of immeasurable strength and of immoderate wrath, the +wrath that passes exhausted but never appeased--the wrath and fury +of the passionate sea. He knew it existed, as we know that crime and +abominations exist; he had heard of it as a peaceable citizen in a town +hears of battles, famines, and floods, and yet knows nothing of what +these things mean--though, indeed, he may have been mixed up in a street +row, have gone without his dinner once, or been soaked to the skin in +a shower. Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as +some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into +a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been +made 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 by +destiny 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 he +thought. He had had an experience of moderately dirty weather--the term +dirty as applied to the weather implying only moderate discomfort to the +seaman. Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that the +end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic +disturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information +under the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he had +no experience of cataclysms, and belief does not necessarily imply +comprehension. The wisdom of his country had pronounced by means of an +Act of Parliament that before he could be considered as fit to take +charge of a ship he should be able to answer certain simple questions on +the subject of circular storms such as hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons; +and apparently he had answered them, since he was now in command of the +Nan-Shan in the China seas during the season of typhoons. But if he +had answered he remembered nothing of it. He was, however, conscious of +being made uncomfortable by the clammy heat. He came out on the bridge, +and found no relief to this oppression. The air seemed thick. He gasped +like a fish, and began to believe himself greatly out of sorts. + +The Nan-Shan was ploughing a vanishing furrow upon the circle of the +sea that had the surface and the shimmer of an undulating piece of +gray silk. The sun, pale and without rays, poured down leaden heat in a +strangely indecisive light, and the Chinamen were lying prostrate about +the decks. Their bloodless, pinched, yellow faces were like the faces +of bilious invalids. Captain MacWhirr noticed two of them especially, +stretched out on their backs below the bridge. As soon as they had +closed their eyes they seemed dead. Three others, however, were +quarrelling 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 in +a girlish attitude, was plaiting his pigtail with infinite languor +depicted in his whole person and in the very movement of his fingers. +The smoke struggled with difficulty out of the funnel, and instead +of 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, caused +the body of Mr. Jukes to start as though it had been prodded under the +fifth rib. He had had a low bench brought on the bridge, and sitting on +it, with a length of rope curled about his feet and a piece of canvas +stretched over his knees, was pushing a sail-needle vigorously. He +looked up, and his surprise gave to his eyes an expression of innocence +and candour. + +“I am only roping some of that new set of bags we made last trip for +whipping up coals,” he remonstrated, gently. “We shall want them for the +next 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 them +had been lost overboard, “if only the truth was known,” and retired +to the other end of the bridge. Jukes, exasperated by this unprovoked +attack, broke the needle at the second stitch, and dropping his work got +up and cursed the heat in a violent undertone. + +The propeller thumped, the three Chinamen forward had given up +squabbling very suddenly, and the one who had been plaiting his tail +clasped his legs and stared dejectedly over his knees. The lurid +sunshine cast faint and sickly shadows. The swell ran higher and swifter +every moment, and the ship lurched heavily in the smooth, deep hollows +of 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 had +changed to thoughtfulness and concern. He caught hold of the bridge-rail +and stared ahead. + +The temperature in the engine-room had gone up to a hundred and +seventeen degrees. Irritated voices were ascending through the skylight +and 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 of +iron and throats of bronze had been quarrelling down there. The second +engineer 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 that +afternoon the stokers were answering him back recklessly, and slammed +the furnace doors with the fury of despair. Then the noise ceased +suddenly, and the second engineer appeared, emerging out of the +stokehold streaked with grime and soaking wet like a chimney-sweep +coming out of a well. As soon as his head was clear of the fiddle he +began to scold Jukes for not trimming properly the stokehold +ventilators; and in answer Jukes made with his hands deprecatory +soothing signs meaning: “No wind--can't be helped--you can see for +yourself.” But the other wouldn't hear reason. His teeth flashed angrily +in his dirty face. He didn't mind, he said, the trouble of punching +their blanked heads down there, blank his soul, but did the condemned +sailors think you could keep steam up in the God-forsaken boilers simply +by knocking the blanked stokers about? No, by George! You had to get +some draught, too--may he be everlastingly blanked for a swab-headed +deck-hand if you didn't! And the chief, too, rampaging before the +steam-gauge and carrying on like a lunatic up and down the engine-room +ever since noon. What did Jukes think he was stuck up there for, if he +couldn't get one of his decayed, good-for-nothing deck-cripples to turn +the 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 and +begged the other in a restrained tone not to make a disgusting ass of +himself; the skipper was on the other side of the bridge. But the second +declared mutinously that he didn't care a rap who was on the other side +of the bridge, and Jukes, passing in a flash from lofty disapproval into +a state of exaltation, invited him in unflattering terms to come up and +twist the beastly things to please himself, and catch such wind as a +donkey of his sort could find. The second rushed up to the fray. He +flung himself at the port ventilator as though he meant to tear it out +bodily and toss it overboard. All he did was to move the cowl round a +few inches, with an enormous expenditure of force, and seemed spent +in the effort. He leaned against the back of the wheelhouse, and Jukes +walked up to him. + +“Oh, Heavens!” ejaculated the engineer in a feeble voice. He lifted +his eyes to the sky, and then let his glassy stare descend to meet the +horizon that, tilting up to an angle of forty degrees, seemed to hang on +a 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 an +air of superiority. “We're going to catch it this time,” he said. “The +barometer is tumbling down like anything, Harry. And you trying to kick +up that silly row. . . .” + +The word “barometer” seemed to revive the second engineer's mad +animosity. Collecting afresh all his energies, he directed Jukes in a +low and brutal tone to shove the unmentionable instrument down his +gory throat. Who cared for his crimson barometer? It was the steam--the +steam--that was going down; and what between the firemen going faint and +the chief going silly, it was worse than a dog's life for him; he didn't +care a tinker's curse how soon the whole show was blown out of the +water. He seemed on the point of having a cry, but after regaining his +breath he muttered darkly, “I'll faint them,” and dashed off. He stopped +upon 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 red +ears of Captain MacWhirr, who had come across. He did not look at his +chief officer, but said at once, “That's a very violent man, that second +engineer.” + +“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 a +jerk by an awning stanchion. + +“A profane man,” he said, obstinately. “If this goes on, I'll have to +get rid of him the first chance.” + +“It's the heat,” said Jukes. “The weather's awful. It would make a saint +swear. Even up here I feel exactly as if I had my head tied up in a +woollen blanket.” + +Captain MacWhirr looked up. “D'ye mean to say, Mr. Jukes, you ever had +your 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 wish +you wouldn't talk so wild. What sort of saint would that be that would +swear? No more saint than yourself, I expect. And what's a blanket got +to do with it--or the weather either. . . . The heat does not make me +swear--does it? It's filthy bad temper. That's what it is. And what's +the 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 by +words of passion and resentment: “Damme! I'll fire him out of the ship +if he don't look out.” + +And Jukes, incorrigible, thought: “Goodness me! Somebody's put a new +inside to my old man. Here's temper, if you like. Of course it's the +weather; what else? It would make an angel quarrelsome--let alone a +saint.” + +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 morning +had brought it near its end. A dense bank of cloud became visible to the +northward; it had a sinister dark olive tint, and lay low and motionless +upon the sea, resembling a solid obstacle in the path of the ship. She +went floundering towards it like an exhausted creature driven to its +death. The coppery twilight retired slowly, and the darkness brought +out overhead a swarm of unsteady, big stars, that, as if blown upon, +flickered exceedingly and seemed to hang very near the earth. At eight +o'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 course +of the ship, and in the column for “wind” scrawled the word “calm” from +top to bottom of the eight hours since noon. He was exasperated by the +continuous, monotonous rolling of the ship. The heavy inkstand would +slide away in a manner that suggested perverse intelligence in dodging +the 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, and +commented to himself, “Heavily is no word for it.” Then he wrote: +“Sunset threatening, with a low bank of clouds to N. and E. Sky clear +overhead.” + +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 upwards +between the teakwood jambs on a black sky. The whole lot took flight +together and disappeared, leaving only a blackness flecked with white +flashes, for the sea was as black as the sky and speckled with foam +afar. The stars that had flown to the roll came back on the return swing +of the ship, rushing downwards in their glittering multitude, not of +fiery points, but enlarged to tiny discs brilliant with a clear wet +sheen. + +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. Battened +down the coolies for the night. Barometer still falling.” He paused, and +thought to himself, “Perhaps nothing whatever'll come of it.” And then +he closed resolutely his entries: “Every appearance of a typhoon coming +on.” + +On going out he had to stand aside, and Captain MacWhirr strode over the +doorstep 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 with +his kind; and he remarked cheerily to the second mate: “Doesn't look so +bad, after all--does it?” + +The second mate was marching to and fro on the bridge, tripping down +with small steps one moment, and the next climbing with difficulty the +shifting 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 roll +till his lowered hand touched the planks. This time the second mate made +in his throat a noise of an unfriendly nature. + +He was an oldish, shabby little fellow, with bad teeth and no hair on +his face. He had been shipped in a hurry in Shanghai, that trip when +the second officer brought from home had delayed the ship three hours +in port by contriving (in some manner Captain MacWhirr could never +understand) to fall overboard into an empty coal-lighter lying +alongside, and had to be sent ashore to the hospital with concussion of +the brain and a broken limb or two. + +Jukes was not discouraged by the unsympathetic sound. “The Chinamen must +be having a lovely time of it down there,” he said. “It's lucky for them +the old girl has the easiest roll of any ship I've ever been in. There +now! 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, he +always looked as though he were raging inwardly; and he was concise in +his speech to the point of rudeness. All his time off duty he spent +in his cabin with the door shut, keeping so still in there that he was +supposed to fall asleep as soon as he had disappeared; but the man who +came in to wake him for his watch on deck would invariably find him with +his eyes wide open, flat on his back in the bunk, and glaring irritably +from a soiled pillow. He never wrote any letters, did not seem to hope +for news from anywhere; and though he had been heard once to mention +West Hartlepool, it was with extreme bitterness, and only in connection +with the extortionate charges of a boarding-house. He was one of those +men who are picked up at need in the ports of the world. They are +competent enough, appear hopelessly hard up, show no evidence of any +sort 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 their +own atmosphere of casual connection amongst their shipmates who know +nothing of them, and make up their minds to leave at inconvenient times. +They clear out with no words of leavetaking in some God-forsaken port +other men would fear to be stranded in, and go ashore in company of a +shabby sea-chest, corded like a treasure-box, and with an air of shaking +the ship's dust off their feet. + +“You wait,” he repeated, balanced in great swings with his back to +Jukes, motionless and implacable. + +“Do you mean to say we are going to catch it hot?” asked Jukes with +boyish interest. + +“Say? . . . I say nothing. You don't catch me,” snapped the little +second mate, with a mixture of pride, scorn, and cunning, as if Jukes' +question had been a trap cleverly detected. “Oh, no! None of you here +shall 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 up +in the coal-lighter. The far-off blackness ahead of the ship was like +another night seen through the starry night of the earth--the starless +night of the immensities beyond the created universe, revealed in its +appalling stillness through a low fissure in the glittering sphere of +which the earth is the kernel. + +“Whatever there might be about,” said Jukes, “we are steaming straight +into it.” + +“You've said it,” caught up the second mate, always with his back to +Jukes. “You've said it, mind--not I.” + +“Oh, go to Jericho!” said Jukes, frankly; and the other emitted a +triumphant 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 for +saying 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 I +think.” + +“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 series +of rolls, one worse than the other, and for a time Jukes, preserving +his equilibrium, was too busy to open his mouth. As soon as the violent +swinging had quieted down somewhat, he said: “This is a bit too much of +a good thing. Whether anything is coming or not I think she ought to be +put head on to that swell. The old man is just gone in to lie down. Hang +me if I don't speak to him.” + +But when he opened the door of the chart-room he saw his captain reading +a book. Captain MacWhirr was not lying down: he was standing up with +one hand grasping the edge of the bookshelf and the other holding open +before his face a thick volume. The lamp wriggled in the gimbals, +the loosened books toppled from side to side on the shelf, the long +barometer swung in jerky circles, the table altered its slant every +moment. In the midst of all this stir and movement Captain MacWhirr, +holding on, showed his eyes above the upper edge, and asked, “What's the +matter?” + +“Swell getting worse, sir.” + +“Noticed that in here,” muttered Captain MacWhirr. “Anything wrong?” + +Jukes, inwardly disconcerted by the seriousness of the eyes looking at +him 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 of +our 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 this +conversation. + +“The Chinamen! Why don't you speak plainly? Couldn't tell what you +meant. 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 arm +and 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 decks +full of water, sir. Thought you might put her head on perhaps--for a +while. Till this goes down a bit--very soon, I dare say. Head to the +eastward. I never knew a ship roll like this.” + +He held on in the doorway, and Captain MacWhirr, feeling his grip on +the shelf inadequate, made up his mind to let go in a hurry, and fell +heavily on the couch. + +“Head to the eastward?” he said, struggling to sit up. “That's more than +four points off her course.” + +“Yes, sir. Fifty degrees. . . . Would just bring her head far enough +round to meet this. . . .” + +Captain MacWhirr was now sitting up. He had not dropped the book, and he +had 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-powered +steamship four points off her course to make the Chinamen comfortable! +Now, I've heard more than enough of mad things done in the world--but +this. . . . If I didn't know you, Jukes, I would think you were in +liquor. Steer four points off. . . . And what afterwards? Steer four +points over the other way, I suppose, to make the course good. What put +it into your head that I would start to tack a steamer as if she were a +sailing-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,” said +Captain MacWhirr, showing a certain animation. “It's a dead calm, isn't +it?” + +“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 the +way of that dirt,” said Captain MacWhirr, speaking with the utmost +simplicity of manner and tone, and fixing the oilcloth on the floor +with a heavy stare. Thus he noticed neither Jukes' discomfiture nor the +mixture of vexation and astonished respect on his face. + +“Now, here's this book,” he continued with deliberation, slapping his +thigh with the closed volume. “I've been reading the chapter on the +storms there.” + +This was true. He had been reading the chapter on the storms. When he +had entered the chart-room, it was with no intention of taking the book +down. Some influence in the air--the same influence, probably, that +caused the steward to bring without orders the Captain's sea-boots and +oilskin coat up to the chart-room--had as it were guided his hand to +the shelf; and without taking the time to sit down he had waded with a +conscious effort into the terminology of the subject. He lost himself +amongst advancing semi-circles, left- and right-hand quadrants, the +curves of the tracks, the probable bearing of the centre, the shifts of +wind and the readings of barometer. He tried to bring all these +things into a definite relation to himself, and ended by becoming +contemptuously 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 believe +all that's in there, he would be running most of his time all over the +sea trying to get behind the weather.” + +Again he slapped his leg with the book; and Jukes opened his mouth, but +said 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 been +writing this. It passes me. If that thing means anything useful, then +it means that I should at once alter the course away, away to the devil +somewhere, and come booming down on Fu-chau from the northward at the +tail of this dirty weather that's supposed to be knocking about in our +way. From the north! Do you understand, Mr. Jukes? Three hundred extra +miles to the distance, and a pretty coal bill to show. I couldn't bring +myself 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 aboard +here, is he? Very well. Here he says that the centre of them things +bears eight points off the wind; but we haven't got any wind, for all +the 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 in +books. All these rules for dodging breezes and circumventing the winds +of heaven, Mr. Jukes, seem to me the maddest thing, when you come to +look at it sensibly.” + +He raised his eyes, saw Jukes gazing at him dubiously, and tried to +illustrate his meaning. + +“About as queer as your extraordinary notion of dodging the ship head +to 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 to +get there before noon on Friday. If the weather delays me--very well. +There's your log-book to talk straight about the weather. But suppose +I went swinging off my course and came in two days late, and they asked +me: 'Where have you been all that time, Captain?' What could I say to +that? 'Went around to dodge the bad weather,' I would say. 'It must've +been dam' bad,' they would say. 'Don't know,' I would have to say; 'I've +dodged clear of it.' See that, Jukes? I have been thinking it all out +this afternoon.” + +He looked up again in his unseeing, unimaginative way. No one had ever +heard him say so much at one time. Jukes, with his arms open in the +doorway, was like a man invited to behold a miracle. Unbounded wonder +was the intellectual meaning of his eye, while incredulity was seated in +his whole countenance. + +“A gale is a gale, Mr. Jukes,” resumed the Captain, “and a full-powered +steam-ship has got to face it. There's just so much dirty weather +knocking about the world, and the proper thing is to go through it with +none 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 of +shipmasters who came in and sat at a table next to mine. It seemed to me +the greatest nonsense. He was telling them how he outmanoeuvred, I +think he said, a terrific gale, so that it never came nearer than fifty +miles to him. A neat piece of head-work he called it. How he knew there +was a terrific gale fifty miles off beats me altogether. It was like +listening to a crazy man. I would have thought Captain Wilson was old +enough 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 a +door banging. They've put a lot of rubbishy locks into this ship, I must +say.” + +Captain MacWhirr closed his eyes. + +He did so to rest himself. He was tired, and he experienced that state +of mental vacuity which comes at the end of an exhaustive discussion +that has liberated some belief matured in the course of meditative +years. He had indeed been making his confession of faith, had he only +known it; and its effect was to make Jukes, on the other side of the +door, 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? Why +had he not been called? The lamp wriggled in its gimbals, the barometer +swung in circles, the table altered its slant every moment; a pair of +limp sea-boots with collapsed tops went sliding past the couch. He put +out 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 flew +up, a rush of air enveloped Captain MacWhirr. Beginning to draw on the +boot, he directed an expectant gaze at Jukes' swollen, excited features. + +“Came on like this,” shouted Jukes, “five minutes ago . . . all of a +sudden.” + +The head disappeared with a bang, and a heavy splash and patter of drops +swept past the closed door as if a pailful of melted lead had been +flung against the house. A whistling could be heard now upon the +deep vibrating noise outside. The stuffy chart-room seemed as full of +draughts as a shed. Captain MacWhirr collared the other sea-boot on its +violent passage along the floor. He was not flustered, but he could not +find at once the opening for inserting his foot. The shoes he had flung +off were scurrying from end to end of the cabin, gambolling playfully +over each other like puppies. As soon as he stood up he kicked at them +viciously, but without effect. + +He threw himself into the attitude of a lunging fencer, to reach after +his oilskin coat; and afterwards he staggered all over the confined +space while he jerked himself into it. Very grave, straddling his legs +far apart, and stretching his neck, he started to tie deliberately +the strings of his sou'-wester under his chin, with thick fingers that +trembled slightly. He went through all the movements of a woman putting +on her bonnet before a glass, with a strained, listening attention, as +though he had expected every moment to hear the shout of his name in the +confused clamour that had suddenly beset his ship. Its increase filled +his ears while he was getting ready to go out and confront whatever it +might mean. It was tumultuous and very loud--made up of the rush of the +wind, the crashes of the sea, with that prolonged deep vibration of the +air, like the roll of an immense and remote drum beating the charge of +the gale. + +He stood for a moment in the light of the lamp, thick, clumsy, shapeless +in 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. Clinging +to the handle, he was dragged out over the doorstep, and at once found +himself engaged with the wind in a sort of personal scuffle whose +object was the shutting of that door. At the last moment a tongue of air +scurried in and licked out the flame of the lamp. + +Ahead of the ship he perceived a great darkness lying upon a multitude +of white flashes; on the starboard beam a few amazing stars drooped, dim +and fitful, above an immense waste of broken seas, as if seen through a +mad drift of smoke. + +On the bridge a knot of men, indistinct and toiling, were making great +efforts in the light of the wheelhouse windows that shone mistily on +their heads and backs. Suddenly darkness closed upon one pane, then on +another. The voices of the lost group reached him after the manner of +men's voices in a gale, in shreds and fragments of forlorn shouting +snatched 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--could +turn--thought--you--sure--hear.” + +They had gained the shelter of the weather-cloth, and could converse +with raised voices, as people quarrel. + +“I got the hands along to cover up all the ventilators. Good job I had +remained on deck. I didn't think you would be asleep, and so . . . What +did 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, straining +his voice. + +“No, sir. Certainly not. Wind came out right ahead. And here comes the +head sea.” + +A plunge of the ship ended in a shock as if she had landed her forefoot +upon something solid. After a moment of stillness a lofty flight of +sprays 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 stars +had disappeared. + + + +III + +Jukes was as ready a man as any half-dozen young mates that may be +caught by casting a net upon the waters; and though he had been somewhat +taken aback by the startling viciousness of the first squall, he had +pulled himself together on the instant, had called out the hands and had +rushed them along to secure such openings about the deck as had not been +already 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 than +he had expected. From the first stir of the air felt on his cheek the +gale seemed to take upon itself the accumulated impetus of an avalanche. +Heavy sprays enveloped the Nan-Shan from stem to stern, and instantly in +the midst of her regular rolling she began to jerk and plunge as though +she had gone mad with fright. + +Jukes thought, “This is no joke.” While he was exchanging explanatory +yells with his captain, a sudden lowering of the darkness came upon the +night, falling before their vision like something palpable. It was as +if the masked lights of the world had been turned down. Jukes was +uncritically glad to have his captain at hand. It relieved him as though +that man had, by simply coming on deck, taken most of the gale's weight +upon his shoulders. Such is the prestige, the privilege, and the burden +of command. + +Captain MacWhirr could expect no relief of that sort from any one on +earth. Such is the loneliness of command. He was trying to see, with +that watchful manner of a seaman who stares into the wind's eye as if +into the eye of an adversary, to penetrate the hidden intention and +guess the aim and force of the thrust. The strong wind swept at him out +of 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 it +were not so; and very still he waited, feeling stricken by a blind man's +helplessness. + +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 got +the worst of it at once, sir.” A faint burst of lightning quivered all +round, as if flashed into a cavern--into a black and secret chamber of +the sea, with a floor of foaming crests. + +It unveiled for a sinister, fluttering moment a ragged mass of clouds +hanging low, the lurch of the long outlines of the ship, the black +figures of men caught on the bridge, heads forward, as if petrified in +the act of butting. The darkness palpitated down upon all this, and then +the real thing came at last. + +It was something formidable and swift, like the sudden smashing of +a vial of wrath. It seemed to explode all round the ship with an +overpowering concussion and a rush of great waters, as if an immense dam +had been blown up to windward. In an instant the men lost touch of each +other. This is the disintegrating power of a great wind: it isolates one +from one's kind. An earthquake, a landslip, an avalanche, overtake a man +incidentally, as it were--without passion. A furious gale attacks him +like 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 a +great distance through the air. Everything disappeared--even, for +a moment, his power of thinking; but his hand had found one of +the rail-stanchions. His distress was by no means alleviated by an +inclination to disbelieve the reality of this experience. Though young, +he had seen some bad weather, and had never doubted his ability to +imagine the worst; but this was so much beyond his powers of fancy that +it appeared incompatible with the existence of any ship whatever. He +would have been incredulous about himself in the same way, perhaps, had +he not been so harassed by the necessity of exerting a wrestling effort +against a force trying to tear him away from his hold. Moreover, the +conviction of not being utterly destroyed returned to him through the +sensations of being half-drowned, bestially shaken, and partly choked. + +It seemed to him he remained there precariously alone with the stanchion +for 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 and +sometimes it was salt. For the most part he kept his eyes shut tight, as +if suspecting his sight might be destroyed in the immense flurry of +the elements. When he ventured to blink hastily, he derived some moral +support from the green gleam of the starboard light shining feebly upon +the flight of rain and sprays. He was actually looking at it when its +ray fell upon the uprearing sea which put it out. He saw the head of the +wave topple over, adding the mite of its crash to the tremendous uproar +raging around him, and almost at the same instant the stanchion was +wrenched away from his embracing arms. After a crushing thump on his +back he found himself suddenly afloat and borne upwards. His first +irresistible notion was that the whole China Sea had climbed on the +bridge. Then, more sanely, he concluded himself gone overboard. All the +time 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 crazy +resolution to get out of that. And he began to thresh about with his +arms and legs. But as soon as he commenced his wretched struggles he +discovered that he had become somehow mixed up with a face, an oilskin +coat, somebody's boots. He clawed ferociously all these things in +turn, lost them, found them again, lost them once more, and finally was +himself caught in the firm clasp of a pair of stout arms. He returned +the embrace closely round a thick solid body. He had found his captain. + +They tumbled over and over, tightening their hug. Suddenly the water +let them down with a brutal bang; and, stranded against the side of the +wheelhouse, out of breath and bruised, they were left to stagger up in +the wind and hold on where they could. + +Jukes came out of it rather horrified, as though he had escaped some +unparalleled outrage directed at his feelings. It weakened his faith in +himself. He started shouting aimlessly to the man he could feel near him +in that fiendish blackness, “Is it you, sir? Is it you, sir?” till his +temples seemed ready to burst. And he heard in answer a voice, as if +crying far away, as if screaming to him fretfully from a very great +distance, the one word “Yes!” Other seas swept again over the bridge. +He received them defencelessly right over his bare head, with both his +hands engaged in holding. + +The motion of the ship was extravagant. Her lurches had an appalling +helplessness: she pitched as if taking a header into a void, and seemed +to find a wall to hit every time. When she rolled she fell on her side +headlong, and she would be righted back by such a demolishing blow that +Jukes felt her reeling as a clubbed man reels before he collapses. The +gale howled and scuffled about gigantically in the darkness, as though +the entire world were one black gully. At certain moments the air +streamed against the ship as if sucked through a tunnel with a +concentrated solid force of impact that seemed to lift her clean out +of the water and keep her up for an instant with only a quiver running +through her from end to end. And then she would begin her tumbling again +as if dropped back into a boiling cauldron. Jukes tried hard to compose +his mind and judge things coolly. + +The sea, flattened down in the heavier gusts, would uprise and overwhelm +both ends of the Nan-Shan in snowy rushes of foam, expanding wide, +beyond both rails, into the night. And on this dazzling sheet, spread +under the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, Captain +MacWhirr could catch a desolate glimpse of a few tiny specks black as +ebony, the tops of the hatches, the battened companions, the heads of +the covered winches, the foot of a mast. This was all he could see of +his ship. Her middle structure, covered by the bridge which bore him, +his mate, the closed wheelhouse where a man was steering shut up with +the fear of being swept overboard together with the whole thing in one +great crash--her middle structure was like a half-tide rock awash upon a +coast. It was like an outlying rock with the water boiling up, streaming +over, pouring off, beating round--like a rock in the surf to which +shipwrecked people cling before they let go--only it rose, it sank, it +rolled continuously, without respite and rest, like a rock that should +have miraculously struck adrift from a coast and gone wallowing upon the +sea. + +The Nan-Shan was being looted by the storm with a senseless, destructive +fury: trysails torn out of the extra gaskets, double-lashed awnings +blown away, bridge swept clean, weather-cloths burst, rails twisted, +light-screens smashed--and two of the boats had gone already. They had +gone unheard and unseen, melting, as it were, in the shock and smother +of the wave. It was only later, when upon the white flash of another +high sea hurling itself amidships, Jukes had a vision of two pairs of +davits leaping black and empty out of the solid blackness, with one +overhauled fall flying and an iron-bound block capering in the air, that +he became aware of what had happened within about three yards of his +back. + +He poked his head forward, groping for the ear of his commander. His +lips 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 a +penetrating effect of quietness in the enormous discord of noises, as if +sent out from some remote spot of peace beyond the black wastes of the +gale; again he heard a man's voice--the frail and indomitable sound that +can be made to carry an infinity of thought, resolution and purpose, +that shall be pronouncing confident words on the last day, when heavens +fall, 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--I +say 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 more +words on the wind. + +“What can--expect--when hammering through--such--Bound to +leave--something behind--stands to reason.” + +Watchfully Jukes listened for more. No more came. This was all Captain +MacWhirr had to say; and Jukes could picture to himself rather than see +the broad squat back before him. An impenetrable obscurity pressed down +upon the ghostly glimmers of the sea. A dull conviction seized upon +Jukes that there was nothing to be done. + +If the steering-gear did not give way, if the immense volumes of water +did not burst the deck in or smash one of the hatches, if the engines +did not give up, if way could be kept on the ship against this terrific +wind, and she did not bury herself in one of these awful seas, of whose +white crests alone, topping high above her bows, he could now and then +get a sickening glimpse--then there was a chance of her coming out of +it. Something within him seemed to turn over, bringing uppermost the +feeling that the Nan-Shan was lost. + +“She's done for,” he said to himself, with a surprising mental +agitation, as though he had discovered an unexpected meaning in this +thought. One of these things was bound to happen. Nothing could be +prevented now, and nothing could be remedied. The men on board did not +count, and the ship could not last. This weather was too impossible. + +Jukes felt an arm thrown heavily over his shoulders; and to this +overture he responded with great intelligence by catching hold of his +captain round the waist. + +They stood clasped thus in the blind night, bracing each other against +the wind, cheek to cheek and lip to ear, in the manner of two hulks +lashed stem to stern together. + +And Jukes heard the voice of his commander hardly any louder than +before, but nearer, as though, starting to march athwart the prodigious +rush of the hurricane, it had approached him, bearing that strange +effect of quietness like the serene glow of a halo. + +“D'ye know where the hands got to?” it asked, vigorous and evanescent at +the same time, overcoming the strength of the wind, and swept away from +Jukes instantly. + +Jukes didn't know. They were all on the bridge when the real force of +the 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 be +made 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 the +wind absolutely steadied the ship; she rocked only, quick and light like +a child's cradle, for a terrific moment of suspense, while the whole +atmosphere, as it seemed, streamed furiously past her, roaring away from +the 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 water +running upright in the dark, butted against the ship, broke short, +and fell on her bridge, crushingly, from on high, with a dead burying +weight. + +A flying fragment of that collapse, a mere splash, enveloped them in one +swirl from their feet over their heads, filling violently their ears, +mouths and nostrils with salt water. It knocked out their legs, wrenched +in haste at their arms, seethed away swiftly under their chins; and +opening their eyes, they saw the piled-up masses of foam dashing to and +fro amongst what looked like the fragments of a ship. She had given way +as if driven straight in. Their panting hearts yielded, too, before the +tremendous blow; and all at once she sprang up again to her desperate +plunging, as if trying to scramble out from under the ruins. + +The seas in the dark seemed to rush from all sides to keep her back +where she might perish. There was hate in the way she was handled, and +a ferocity in the blows that fell. She was like a living creature thrown +to the rage of a mob: hustled terribly, struck at, borne up, flung +down, leaped upon. Captain MacWhirr and Jukes kept hold of each other, +deafened by the noise, gagged by the wind; and the great physical +tumult beating about their bodies, brought, like an unbridled display +of passion, a profound trouble to their souls. One of those wild and +appalling shrieks that are heard at times passing mysteriously overhead +in the steady roar of a hurricane, swooped, as if borne on wings, upon +the 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 the +birth of a thought in the head, and he heard nothing of it himself. It +all became extinct at once--thought, intention, effort--and of his cry +the inaudible vibration added to the tempest waves of the air. + +He expected nothing from it. Nothing at all. For indeed what answer +could be made? But after a while he heard with amazement the frail and +resisting voice in his ear, the dwarf sound, unconquered in the giant +tumult. + +“She may!” + +It was a dull yell, more difficult to seize than a whisper. And +presently 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 to +the visions of hope or fear; and it flickered into disconnected words: +“Ship. . . . . This. . . . Never--Anyhow . . . for the best.” Jukes gave +it up. + +Then, as if it had come suddenly upon the one thing fit to withstand +the power of a storm, it seemed to gain force and firmness for the last +broken shouts: + +“Keep on hammering . . . builders . . . good men. . . . . And chance it +. . . engines. . . . Rout . . . good man.” + +Captain MacWhirr removed his arm from Jukes' shoulders, and thereby +ceased to exist for his mate, so dark it was; Jukes, after a tense +stiffening of every muscle, would let himself go limp all over. The +gnawing of profound discomfort existed side by side with an incredible +disposition to somnolence, as though he had been buffeted and worried +into drowsiness. The wind would get hold of his head and try to shake +it 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 lasted +a long time; and with his hands closed hard on his hold, he was letting +himself sink slowly into the depths of bodily misery. His mind became +concentrated upon himself in an aimless, idle way, and when something +pushed 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't +move; and then a hand gripped his thigh. A lull had come, a menacing +lull of the wind, the holding of a stormy breath--and he felt himself +pawed all over. It was the boatswain. Jukes recognized these hands, so +thick and enormous that they seemed to belong to some new species of +man. + +The boatswain had arrived on the bridge, crawling on all fours against +the 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 with +prudent, apologetic touches, as became an inferior. + +He was an ill-favoured, undersized, gruff sailor of fifty, coarsely +hairy, short-legged, long-armed, resembling an elderly ape. His +strength was immense; and in his great lumpy paws, bulging like brown +boxing-gloves on the end of furry forearms, the heaviest objects were +handled like playthings. Apart from the grizzled pelt on his chest, the +menacing demeanour and the hoarse voice, he had none of the classical +attributes of his rating. His good nature almost amounted to imbecility: +the men did what they liked with him, and he had not an ounce of +initiative in his character, which was easy-going and talkative. For +these 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 the +greatest moderation, and only so far as it was forced upon him by the +hurricane. + +“What is it, boss'n, what is it?” yelled Jukes, impatiently. What could +that fraud of a boss'n want on the bridge? The typhoon had got on Jukes' +nerves. The husky bellowings of the other, though unintelligible, seemed +to 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 changed +tone he began to inquire: “Is it you, sir? Is it you, sir?” The wind +strangled his howls. + +“Yes!” cried Captain MacWhirr. + + + +IV + +All that the boatswain, out of a superabundance of yells, could make +clear to Captain MacWhirr was the bizarre intelligence that “All them +Chinamen in the fore 'tween deck have fetched away, sir.” + +Jukes to leeward could hear these two shouting within six inches of +his face, as you may hear on a still night half a mile away two men +conversing across a field. He heard Captain MacWhirr's exasperated +“What? What?” and the strained pitch of the other's hoarseness. “In a +lump . . . seen them myself. . . . Awful sight, sir . . . thought . . . +tell you.” + +Jukes remained indifferent, as if rendered irresponsible by the force +of the hurricane, which made the very thought of action utterly vain. +Besides, being very young, he had found the occupation of keeping his +heart completely steeled against the worst so engrossing that he had +come to feel an overpowering dislike towards any other form of activity +whatever. He was not scared; he knew this because, firmly believing he +would never see another sunrise, he remained calm in that belief. + +These are the moments of do-nothing heroics to which even good men +surrender at times. Many officers of ships can no doubt recall a case +in their experience when just such a trance of confounded stoicism would +come all at once over a whole ship's company. Jukes, however, had +no wide experience of men or storms. He conceived himself to be +calm--inexorably calm; but as a matter of fact he was daunted; not +abjectly, but only so far as a decent man may, without becoming +loathsome to himself. + +It was rather like a forced-on numbness of spirit. The long, long +stress of a gale does it; the suspense of the interminably culminating +catastrophe; and there is a bodily fatigue in the mere holding on to +existence within the excessive tumult; a searching and insidious fatigue +that penetrates deep into a man's breast to cast down and sadden his +heart, which is incorrigible, and of all the gifts of the earth--even +before 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 of +swift visions (it is said that a drowning man thus reviews all his life) +he beheld all sorts of memories altogether unconnected with his present +situation. He remembered his father, for instance: a worthy business +man, who at an unfortunate crisis in his affairs went quietly to bed +and died forthwith in a state of resignation. Jukes did not recall these +circumstances, of course, but remaining otherwise unconcerned he seemed +to see distinctly the poor man's face; a certain game of nap played when +quite 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, as +he might years ago have walked listlessly into her room and found her +sitting there with a book, he remembered his mother--dead, too, now--the +resolute woman, left badly off, who had been very firm in his bringing +up. + +It could not have lasted more than a second, perhaps not so much. A +heavy arm had fallen about his shoulders; Captain MacWhirr's voice was +speaking his name into his ear. + +“Jukes! Jukes!” + +He detected the tone of deep concern. The wind had thrown its weight +on the ship, trying to pin her down amongst the seas. They made a clean +breach over her, as over a deep-swimming log; and the gathered weight +of crashes menaced monstrously from afar. The breakers flung out of the +night with a ghostly light on their crests--the light of sea-foam that +in a ferocious, boiling-up pale flash showed upon the slender body of +the ship the toppling rush, the downfall, and the seething mad scurry +of each wave. Never for a moment could she shake herself clear of +the water; Jukes, rigid, perceived in her motion the ominous sign of +haphazard floundering. She was no longer struggling intelligently. It +was the beginning of the end; and the note of busy concern in Captain +MacWhirr's voice sickened him like an exhibition of blind and pernicious +folly. + +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 them +like 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 in +the customary manner: “. . . Yes, sir.” + +And directly, his heart, corrupted by the storm that breeds a craving +for peace, rebelled against the tyranny of training and command. + +Captain MacWhirr had his mate's head fixed firm in the crook of his +elbow, and pressed it to his yelling lips mysteriously. Sometimes +Jukes would break in, admonishing hastily: “Look out, sir!” or Captain +MacWhirr would bawl an earnest exhortation to “Hold hard, there!” and +the whole black universe seemed to reel together with the ship. They +paused. 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 part +of her deck became untenable; and the sailors, dazed and dismayed, took +shelter in the port alleyway under the bridge. It had a door aft, which +they shut; it was very black, cold, and dismal. At each heavy fling of +the ship they would groan all together in the dark, and tons of water +could 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 unreasonable +lot of men, he said afterwards, he had never been with. They were snug +enough 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 many +sick kids. Finally, one of them said that if there had been at least +some light to see each other's noses by, it wouldn't be so bad. It was +making him crazy, he declared, to lie there in the dark waiting for the +blamed hooker to sink. + +“Why don't you step outside, then, and be done with it at once?” the +boatswain turned on him. + +This called up a shout of execration. The boatswain found himself +overwhelmed with reproaches of all sorts. They seemed to take it ill +that a lamp was not instantly created for them out of nothing. They +would whine after a light to get drowned by--anyhow! And though the +unreason of their revilings was patent--since no one could hope to reach +the lamp-room, which was forward--he became greatly distressed. He did +not think it was decent of them to be nagging at him like this. He told +them so, and was met by general contumely. He sought refuge, therefore, +in an embittered silence. At the same time their grumbling and sighing +and muttering worried him greatly, but by-and-by it occurred to him that +there were six globe lamps hung in the 'tween-deck, and that there could +be no harm in depriving the coolies of one of them. + +The Nan-Shan had an athwartship coal-bunker, which, being at times used +as 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 at +all; but to his great surprise he found he could induce no one to help +him in taking off the manhole cover. He groped for it all the same, but +one of the crew lying in his way refused to budge. + +“Why, I only want to get you that blamed light you are crying for,” he +expostulated, almost pitifully. + +Somebody told him to go and put his head in a bag. He regretted he could +not 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 he +could get a light, if he were to die for it. + +Through the violence of the ship's rolling, every movement was +dangerous. To be lying down seemed labour enough. He nearly broke +his neck dropping into the bunker. He fell on his back, and was sent +shooting helplessly from side to side in the dangerous company of a +heavy iron bar--a coal-trimmer's slice probably--left down there by +somebody. This thing made him as nervous as though it had been a +wild beast. He could not see it, the inside of the bunker coated with +coal-dust being perfectly and impenetrably black; but he heard it +sliding and clattering, and striking here and there, always in the +neighbourhood of his head. It seemed to make an extraordinary noise, +too--to give heavy thumps as though it had been as big as a bridge +girder. This was remarkable enough for him to notice while he was flung +from port to starboard and back again, and clawing desperately the +smooth sides of the bunker in the endeavour to stop himself. The door +into the 'tween-deck not fitting quite true, he saw a thread of dim +light at the bottom. + +Being a sailor, and a still active man, he did not want much of a chance +to regain his feet; and as luck would have it, in scrambling up he put +his hand on the iron slice, picking it up as he rose. Otherwise he would +have been afraid of the thing breaking his legs, or at least knocking +him down again. At first he stood still. He felt unsafe in this darkness +that seemed to make the ship's motion unfamiliar, unforeseen, and +difficult to counteract. He felt so much shaken for a moment that he +dared not move for fear of “taking charge again.” He had no mind to get +battered to pieces in that bunker. + +He had struck his head twice; he was dazed a little. He seemed to hear +yet so plainly the clatter and bangs of the iron slice flying about +his ears that he tightened his grip to prove to himself he had it there +safely in his hand. He was vaguely amazed at the plainness with which +down there he could hear the gale raging. Its howls and shrieks seemed +to take on, in the emptiness of the bunker, something of the human +character, of human rage and pain--being not vast but infinitely +poignant. And there were, with every roll, thumps, too--profound, +ponderous thumps, as if a bulky object of five-ton weight or so had got +play in the hold. But there was no such thing in the cargo. Something on +deck? Impossible. Or alongside? Couldn't be. + +He thought all this quickly, clearly, competently, like a seaman, and +in the end remained puzzled. This noise, though, came deadened from +outside, together with the washing and pouring of water on deck above +his head. Was it the wind? Must be. It made down there a row like the +shouting of a big lot of crazed men. And he discovered in himself +a desire for a light, too--if only to get drowned by--and a nervous +anxiety to get out of that bunker as quickly as possible. + +He pulled back the bolt: the heavy iron plate turned on its hinges; and +it 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 rushing +of water overhead was covered by a tumult of strangled, throaty shrieks +that produced an effect of desperate confusion. He straddled his legs +the whole width of the doorway and stretched his neck. And at first +he perceived only what he had come to seek: six small yellow flames +swinging violently on the great body of the dusk. + +It was stayed like the gallery of a mine, with a row of stanchions +in the middle, and cross-beams overhead, penetrating into the gloom +ahead--indefinitely. And to port there loomed, like the caving in of +one of the sides, a bulky mass with a slanting outline. The whole place, +with the shadows and the shapes, moved all the time. The boatswain +glared: the ship lurched to starboard, and a great howl came from that +mass 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: and +another came bounding like a detached stone with his head between his +legs and his hands clenched. His pigtail whipped in the air; he made a +grab at the boatswain's legs, and from his opened hand a bright white +disc rolled against the boatswain's foot. He recognized a silver dollar, +and yelled at it with astonishment. With a precipitated sound of +trampling and shuffling of bare feet, and with guttural cries, the mound +of writhing bodies piled up to port detached itself from the ship's side +and sliding, inert and struggling, shifted to starboard, with a dull, +brutal thump. The cries ceased. The boatswain heard a long moan through +the roar and whistling of the wind; he saw an inextricable confusion of +heads and shoulders, naked soles kicking upwards, fists raised, tumbling +backs, legs, pigtails, faces. + +“Good Lord!” he cried, horrified, and banged-to the iron door upon this +vision. + +This was what he had come on the bridge to tell. He could not keep it +to himself; and on board ship there is only one man to whom it is +worth while to unburden yourself. On his passage back the hands in the +alleyway swore at him for a fool. Why didn't he bring that lamp? What +the devil did the coolies matter to anybody? And when he came out, the +extremity of the ship made what went on inside of her appear of little +moment. + +At first he thought he had left the alleyway in the very moment of her +sinking. The bridge ladders had been washed away, but an enormous sea +filling the after-deck floated him up. After that he had to lie on his +stomach for some time, holding to a ring-bolt, getting his breath now +and then, and swallowing salt water. He struggled farther on his hands +and knees, too frightened and distracted to turn back. In this way +he reached the after-part of the wheelhouse. In that comparatively +sheltered spot he found the second mate. + +The boatswain was pleasantly surprised--his impression being that +everybody on deck must have been washed away a long time ago. He asked +eagerly where the Captain was. + +The second mate was lying low, like a malignant little animal under a +hedge. + +“Captain? Gone overboard, after getting us into this mess.” The mate, +too, for all he knew or cared. Another fool. Didn't matter. Everybody +was going by-and-by. + +The boatswain crawled out again into the strength of the wind; not +because he much expected to find anybody, he said, but just to get away +from “that man.” He crawled out as outcasts go to face an inclement +world. Hence his great joy at finding Jukes and the Captain. But what +was 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 to +convey the idea that the Chinaman had broken adrift together with their +boxes, and that he had come up on purpose to report this. As to the +hands, they were all right. Then, appeased, he subsided on the deck in +a sitting posture, hugging with his arms and legs the stand of the +engine-room telegraph--an iron casting as thick as a post. When that +went, why, he expected he would go, too. He gave no more thought to the +coolies. + + +Captain MacWhirr had made Jukes understand that he wanted him to go down +below--to see. + +“What am I to do then, sir?” And the trembling of his whole wet body +caused 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 as +unwilling to go as if the moment he had left the deck the ship were sure +to 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 . . . some +way. 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 seemed +horrible suggestions. + +“Don't want . . . you get lost . . . so long . . . ship isn't. . . . . +Rout . . . Good man . . . Ship . . . may . . . through this . . . all +right 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 one +word, 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 off +his shoulders. He was dismissed with his orders--to do what? He was +exasperated into letting go his hold carelessly, and on the instant +was blown away. It seemed to him that nothing could stop him from being +blown right over the stern. He flung himself down hastily, and the +boatswain, 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 the +bridge ladders were gone. “I'll lower you down, sir, by your hands,” + he screamed. He shouted also something about the smoke-stack being +as likely to go overboard as not. Jukes thought it very possible, and +imagined the fires out, the ship helpless. . . . The boatswain by his +side kept on yelling. “What? What is it?” Jukes cried distressfully; and +the 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 the +dark, the men were still as death, till Jukes stumbled against one of +them and cursed him savagely for being in the way. Two or three voices +then asked, eager and weak, “Any chance for us, sir?” + +“What's the matter with you fools?” he said brutally. He felt as though +he could throw himself down amongst them and never move any more. But +they seemed cheered; and in the midst of obsequious warnings, “Look +out! Mind that manhole lid, sir,” they lowered him into the bunker. The +boatswain tumbled down after him, and as soon as he had picked himself +up he remarked, “She would say, 'Serve you right, you old fool, for +going to sea.'” + +The boatswain had some means, and made a point of alluding to them +frequently. His wife--a fat woman--and two grown-up daughters kept a +greengrocer's shop in the East-end of London. + +In the dark, Jukes, unsteady on his legs, listened to a faint thunderous +patter. A deadened screaming went on steadily at his elbow, as it were; +and from above the louder tumult of the storm descended upon these near +sounds. His head swam. To him, too, in that bunker, the motion of the +ship seemed novel and menacing, sapping his resolution as though he had +never been afloat before. + +He had half a mind to scramble out again; but the remembrance of Captain +MacWhirr'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 he +would see--of course. But the boatswain, staggering clumsily, warned him +to be careful how he opened that door; there was a blamed fight going +on. And Jukes, as if in great bodily pain, desired irritably to know +what the devil they were fighting for. + +“Dollars! Dollars, sir. All their rotten chests got burst open. Blamed +money skipping all over the place, and they are tumbling after it head +over heels--tearing and biting like anything. A regular little hell in +there.” + +Jukes convulsively opened the door. The short boatswain peered under his +arm. + +One of the lamps had gone out, broken perhaps. Rancorous, guttural cries +burst out loudly on their ears, and a strange panting sound, the working +of 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 the +gloom, where the air was reddish and thick, Jukes saw a head bang the +deck violently, two thick calves waving on high, muscular arms twined +round a naked body, a yellow-face, open-mouthed and with a set wild +stare, 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 farther +off, indistinct, others streamed like a mass of rolling stones down +a bank, thumping the deck with their feet and flourishing their arms +wildly. The hatchway ladder was loaded with coolies swarming on it +like bees on a branch. They hung on the steps in a crawling, stirring +cluster, beating madly with their fists the underside of the battened +hatch, and the headlong rush of the water above was heard in the +intervals of their yelling. The ship heeled over more, and they began +to 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 the +while; and when the ship rose to a sea Jukes fancied that all these men +would be shot upon him in a body. He backed out, swung the door to, and +with 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 hinged +forward, he had to fight the gale for admittance, and when at last he +managed to enter, it was with an instantaneous clatter and a bang, as +though he had been fired through the wood. He stood within, holding on +to the handle. + +The steering-gear leaked steam, and in the confined space the glass of +the binnacle made a shiny oval of light in a thin white fog. The wind +howled, hummed, whistled, with sudden booming gusts that rattled +the doors and shutters in the vicious patter of sprays. Two coils of +lead-line and a small canvas bag hung on a long lanyard, swung wide off, +and came back clinging to the bulkheads. The gratings underfoot were +nearly afloat; with every sweeping blow of a sea, water squirted +violently through the cracks all round the door, and the man at the +helm had flung down his cap, his coat, and stood propped against the +gear-casing in a striped cotton shirt open on his breast. The little +brass wheel in his hands had the appearance of a bright and fragile +toy. The cords of his neck stood hard and lean, a dark patch lay in the +hollow of his throat, and his face was still and sunken as in death. + +Captain MacWhirr wiped his eyes. The sea that had nearly taken him +overboard had, to his great annoyance, washed his sou'-wester hat off +his bald head. The fluffy, fair hair, soaked and darkened, resembled a +mean skein of cotton threads festooned round his bare skull. His face, +glistening with sea-water, had been made crimson with the wind, with +the sting of sprays. He looked as though he had come off sweating from +before 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 pressed +against each temple; and this attitude suggested rage, sorrow, +resignation, surrender, with a sort of concentrated unforgiveness. He +said mournfully and defiantly, “Well, it's my watch below now: ain't +it?” + +The steam gear clattered, stopped, clattered again; and the helmsman's +eyeballs seemed to project out of a hungry face as if the compass card +behind the binnacle glass had been meat. God knows how long he had been +left there to steer, as if forgotten by all his shipmates. The bells had +not been struck; there had been no reliefs; the ship's routine had gone +down wind; but he was trying to keep her head north-north-east. The +rudder might have been gone for all he knew, the fires out, the engines +broken down, the ship ready to roll over like a corpse. He was +anxious not to get muddled and lose control of her head, because the +compass-card swung far both ways, wriggling on the pivot, and sometimes +seemed to whirl right round. He suffered from mental stress. He was +horribly afraid, also, of the wheelhouse going. Mountains of water kept +on tumbling against it. When the ship took one of her desperate dives +the corners of his lips twitched. + +Captain MacWhirr looked up at the wheelhouse clock. Screwed to the +bulk-head, it had a white face on which the black hands appeared to +stand 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 amongst +ruins, “You won't see it break,” he exclaimed. His wrists and his knees +could 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 budge +on 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, and +in the very stagger to save himself, Captain MacWhirr said austerely, +“Don't you pay any attention to what that man says.” And then, with an +indefinable 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. “I +want you to stick to the helm, though, as long as you can. You've +got 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 job +down below. . . . Think you can?” + +The steering-gear leaped into an abrupt short clatter, stopped +smouldering 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: “By +Heavens, sir! I can steer for ever if nobody talks to me.” + +“Oh! aye! All right. . . .” The Captain lifted his eyes for the first +time to the man, “. . . Hackett.” + +And he seemed to dismiss this matter from his mind. He stooped to the +engine-room speaking-tube, blew in, and bent his head. Mr. Rout below +answered, and at once Captain MacWhirr put his lips to the mouthpiece. + +With the uproar of the gale around him he applied alternately his lips +and his ear, and the engineer's voice mounted to him, harsh and as if +out of the heat of an engagement. One of the stokers was disabled, +the others had given in, the second engineer and the donkey-man were +firing-up. The third engineer was standing by the steam-valve. The +engines were being tended by hand. How was it above? + +“Bad enough. It mostly rests with you,” said Captain MacWhirr. Was the +mate down there yet? No? Well, he would be presently. Would Mr. Rout +let 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, it +seemed. Couldn't allow fighting anyhow. . . . + +Mr. Rout had gone away, and Captain MacWhirr could feel against his ear +the pulsation of the engines, like the beat of the ship's heart. Mr. +Rout's voice down there shouted something distantly. The ship pitched +headlong, the pulsation leaped with a hissing tumult, and stopped dead. +Captain MacWhirr's face was impassive, and his eyes were fixed aimlessly +on the crouching shape of the second mate. Again Mr. Rout's voice +cried out in the depths, and the pulsating beats recommenced, with slow +strokes--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 as +if 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 to +state distinctly. + +“I am doing as much as I dare.” + +“We are--getting--smashed up--a good deal up here,” proceeded the voice +mildly. “Doing--fairly well--though. Of course, if the wheelhouse should +go. . . .” + +Mr. Rout, bending an attentive ear, muttered peevishly something under +his breath. + +But the deliberate voice up there became animated to ask: “Jukes turned +up yet?” Then, after a short wait, “I wish he would bear a hand. I want +him to be done and come up here in case of anything. To look after the +ship. 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-fact +tone. “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 broken +exclamations coming down to him. He strained his hearing; and all the +time Beale, the third engineer, with his arms uplifted, held between +the palms of his hands the rim of a little black wheel projecting at the +side of a big copper pipe. + +He seemed to be poising it above his head, as though it were a correct +attitude 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 his +eyelids, like the black pencilling of a make-up, enhanced the liquid +brilliance of the whites, giving to his youthful face something of a +feminine, exotic and fascinating aspect. When the ship pitched he would +with hasty movements of his hands screw hard at the little wheel. + +“Gone crazy,” began the Captain's voice suddenly in the tube. “Rushed at +me. . . . 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 iron +walls of the engine-room. Painted white, they rose high into the dusk of +the skylight, sloping like a roof; and the whole lofty space resembled +the interior of a monument, divided by floors of iron grating, with +lights flickering at different levels, and a mass of gloom lingering in +the middle, within the columnar stir of machinery under the motionless +swelling of the cylinders. A loud and wild resonance, made up of all the +noises of the hurricane, dwelt in the still warmth of the air. There was +in it the smell of hot metal, of oil, and a slight mist of steam. The +blows 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; from +the flooring below the enormous crank-heads emerged in their turns +with a flash of brass and steel--going over; while the connecting-rods, +big-jointed, like skeleton limbs, seemed to thrust them down and pull +them up again with an irresistible precision. And deep in the half-light +other rods dodged deliberately to and fro, crossheads nodded, discs +of metal rubbed smoothly against each other, slow and gentle, in a +commingling of shadows and gleams. + +Sometimes all those powerful and unerring movements would slow down +simultaneously, as if they had been the functions of a living organism, +stricken suddenly by the blight of languor; and Mr. Rout's eyes would +blaze darker in his long sallow face. He was fighting this fight in a +pair of carpet slippers. A short shiny jacket barely covered his loins, +and his white wrists protruded far out of the tight sleeves, as though +the 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 in +front of the starting-gear, he would keep glancing to the right at the +steam-gauge, at the water-gauge, fixed upon the white wall in the light +of a swaying lamp. The mouths of two speaking-tubes gaped stupidly at his +elbow, and the dial of the engine-room telegraph resembled a clock of +large diameter, bearing on its face curt words instead of figures. The +grouped letters stood out heavily black, around the pivot-head of the +indicator, emphatically symbolic of loud exclamations: AHEAD, ASTERN, +SLOW, Half, STAND BY; and the fat black hand pointed downwards to the +word FULL, which, thus singled out, captured the eye as a sharp cry +secures attention. + +The wood-encased bulk of the low-pressure cylinder, frowning portly from +above, emitted a faint wheeze at every thrust, and except for that +low hiss the engines worked their steel limbs headlong or slow with a +silent, determined smoothness. And all this, the white walls, the moving +steel, the floor plates under Solomon Rout's feet, the floors of +iron grating above his head, the dusk and the gleams, uprose and sank +continuously, with one accord, upon the harsh wash of the waves against +the ship's side. The whole loftiness of the place, booming hollow to the +great voice of the wind, swayed at the top like a tree, would go over +bodily, 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 Jukes +appear in the stokehold doorway. + +Jukes' glance was wandering and tipsy; his red face was puffy, as though +he had overslept himself. He had had an arduous road, and had travelled +over it with immense vivacity, the agitation of his mind corresponding +to 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, trod +upon, asked “What's up, sir?” in awed mutters all round him;--down the +stokehold ladder, missing many iron rungs in his hurry, down into a +place deep as a well, black as Tophet, tipping over back and forth like +a see-saw. The water in the bilges thundered at each roll, and lumps of +coal skipped to and fro, from end to end, rattling like an avalanche of +pebbles on a slope of iron. + +Somebody in there moaned with pain, and somebody else could be seen +crouching over what seemed the prone body of a dead man; a lusty voice +blasphemed; and the glow under each fire-door was like a pool of flaming +blood radiating quietly in a velvety blackness. + +A gust of wind struck upon the nape of Jukes' neck and next moment +he felt it streaming about his wet ankles. The stokehold ventilators +hummed: in front of the six fire-doors two wild figures, stripped to the +waist, staggered and stooped, wrestling with two shovels. + +“Hallo! Plenty of draught now,” yelled the second engineer at once, as +though he had been all the time looking out for Jukes. The donkeyman, +a dapper little chap with a dazzling fair skin and a tiny, gingery +moustache, worked in a sort of mute transport. They were keeping a full +head of steam, and a profound rumbling, as of an empty furniture van +trotting over a bridge, made a sustained bass to all the other noises of +the place. + +“Blowing off all the time,” went on yelling the second. With a sound as +of a hundred scoured saucepans, the orifice of a ventilator spat upon +his shoulder a sudden gush of salt water, and he volleyed a stream of +curses upon all things on earth including his own soul, ripping and +raving, and all the time attending to his business. With a sharp clash +of metal the ardent pale glare of the fire opened upon his bullet head, +showing his spluttering lips, his insolent face, and with another clang +closed like the white-hot wink of an iron eye. + +“Where's the blooming ship? Can you tell me? blast my eyes! Under +water--or what? It's coming down here in tons. Are the condemned cowls +gone 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 dart +through; and as soon as his eyes took in the comparative vastness, peace +and brilliance of the engine-room, the ship, setting her stern heavily +in the water, sent him charging head down upon Mr. Rout. + +The chief's arm, long like a tentacle, and straightening as if worked +by a spring, went out to meet him, and deflected his rush into a +spin towards the speaking-tubes. At the same time Mr. Rout repeated +earnestly: + +“You've got to hurry up, whatever it is.” + +Jukes yelled “Are you there, sir?” and listened. Nothing. Suddenly the +roar of the wind fell straight into his ear, but presently a small voice +shoved aside the shouting hurricane quietly. + +“You, Jukes?--Well?” + +Jukes was ready to talk: it was only time that seemed to be wanting. It +was easy enough to account for everything. He could perfectly imagine +the coolies battened down in the reeking 'tween-deck, lying sick and +scared between the rows of chests. Then one of these chests--or perhaps +several at once--breaking loose in a roll, knocking out others, sides +splitting, lids flying open, and all these clumsy Chinamen rising up in +a body to save their property. Afterwards every fling of the ship would +hurl that tramping, yelling mob here and there, from side to side, in a +whirl of smashed wood, torn clothing, rolling dollars. A struggle once +started, they would be unable to stop themselves. Nothing could stop +them now except main force. It was a disaster. He had seen it, and that +was all he could say. Some of them must be dead, he believed. The rest +would go on fighting. . . . + +He sent up his words, tripping over each other, crowding the narrow +tube. They mounted as if into a silence of an enlightened comprehension +dwelling alone up there with a storm. And Jukes wanted to be dismissed +from the face of that odious trouble intruding on the great need of the +ship. + + + +V + +He waited. Before his eyes the engines turned with slow labour, that in +the moment of going off into a mad fling would stop dead at Mr. Rout's +shout, “Look out, Beale!” They paused in an intelligent immobility, +stilled in mid-stroke, a heavy crank arrested on the cant, as if +conscious of danger and the passage of time. Then, with a “Now, then!” + from the chief, and the sound of a breath expelled through clenched +teeth, they would accomplish the interrupted revolution and begin +another. + +There was the prudent sagacity of wisdom and the deliberation of +enormous strength in their movements. This was their work--this patient +coaxing of a distracted ship over the fury of the waves and into the +very 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 the +hands with you . . . ,” and left off unexpectedly. + +“What could I do with them, sir?” + +A harsh, abrupt, imperious clang exploded suddenly. The three pairs of +eyes flew up to the telegraph dial to see the hand jump from FULL +to STOP, as if snatched by a devil. And then these three men in the +engineroom had the intimate sensation of a check upon the ship, of a +strange 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 of +a white line of foam coming on at such a height that he couldn't believe +his eyes--nobody was to know the steepness of that sea and the awful +depth of the hollow the hurricane had scooped out behind the running +wall 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 lamps +sank, darkening the engine-room. One went out. With a tearing crash and +a swirling, raving tumult, tons of water fell upon the deck, as though +the 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 of +the world. The engine-room toppled forward menacingly, like the inside +of a tower nodding in an earthquake. An awful racket, of iron things +falling, came from the stokehold. She hung on this appalling slant long +enough for Beale to drop on his hands and knees and begin to crawl as if +he meant to fly on all fours out of the engine-room, and for Mr. Rout +to turn his head slowly, rigid, cavernous, with the lower jaw dropping. +Jukes had shut his eyes, and his face in a moment became hopelessly +blank and gentle, like the face of a blind man. + +At last she rose slowly, staggering, as if she had to lift a mountain +with her bows. + +Mr. Rout shut his mouth; Jukes blinked; and little Beale stood up +hastily. + +“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 their +heads. The Captain! Everything must have been swept away. Steering-gear +gone--ship like a log. All over directly. + +“Rush!” ejaculated Mr. Rout thickly, glaring with enlarged, doubtful +eyes at Jukes, who answered him by an irresolute glance. + +The clang of the telegraph gong soothed them instantly. The black hand +dropped 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 his +ear to the tube. The voice was ready for him. It said: “Pick up all the +money. 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 had +got, in some way or other, a cut above his left eyebrow--a cut to the +bone. 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, had +cleaned, washed, and salted that wound. It did not bleed, but only gaped +red; and this gash over the eye, his dishevelled hair, the disorder of +his 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 pitifully +at random. + +“What's that?” asked Mr. Rout, wildly. “Pick up . . . ? I don't care. +. . .” Then, quivering in every muscle, but with an exaggeration of +paternal tone, “Go away now, for God's sake. You deck people'll drive +me silly. There's that second mate been going for the old man. Don't you +know? You fellows are going wrong for want of something to do. . . .” + +At these words Jukes discovered in himself the beginnings of anger. Want +of something to do--indeed. . . . Full of hot scorn against the +chief, he turned to go the way he had come. In the stokehold the plump +donkeyman toiled with his shovel mutely, as if his tongue had been cut +out; but the second was carrying on like a noisy, undaunted maniac, who +had preserved his skill in the art of stoking under a marine boiler. + +“Hallo, you wandering officer! Hey! Can't you get some of your +slush-slingers to wind up a few of them ashes? I am getting choked with +them here. Curse it! Hallo! Hey! Remember the articles: Sailors and +firemen to assist each other. Hey! D'ye hear?” + +Jukes was climbing out frantically, and the other, lifting up his face +after 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 the +darkness of the alleyway, he felt ready to wring all their necks at the +slightest 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. They +had already been excited and startled at all his comings and goings--by +the fierceness and rapidity of his movements; and more felt than seen +in his rushes, he appeared formidable--busied with matters of life and +death that brooked no delay. At his first word he heard them drop into +the bunker one after another obediently, with heavy thumps. + +They were not clear as to what would have to be done. “What is it? What +is 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 their +danger. When the boatswain threw open the door it seemed that an eddy of +the hurricane, stealing through the iron sides of the ship, had set all +these bodies whirling like dust: there came to them a confused uproar, +a tempestuous tumult, a fierce mutter, gusts of screams dying away, and +the tramping of feet mingling with the blows of the sea. + +For a moment they glared amazed, blocking the doorway. Jukes pushed +through them brutally. He said nothing, and simply darted in. Another +lot of coolies on the ladder, struggling suicidally to break through the +battened hatch to a swamped deck, fell off as before, and he disappeared +under them like a man overtaken by a landslide. + +The boatswain yelled excitedly: “Come along. Get the mate out. He'll be +trampled to death. Come on.” + +They charged in, stamping on breasts, on fingers, on faces, catching +their feet in heaps of clothing, kicking broken wood; but before they +could get hold of him Jukes emerged waist deep in a multitude of clawing +hands. In the instant he had been lost to view, all the buttons of his +jacket had gone, its back had got split up to the collar, his waistcoat +had been torn open. The central struggling mass of Chinamen went over to +the roll, dark, indistinct, helpless, with a wild gleam of many eyes in +the dim light of the lamps. + +“Leave me alone--damn you. I am all right,” screeched Jukes. “Drive them +forward. Watch your chance when she pitches. Forward with 'em. Drive +them against the bulkhead. Jam 'em up.” + +The rush of the sailors into the seething 'tween-deck was like a splash +of 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, the +seamen sent it forward in one great shove, like a solid block. Behind +their backs small clusters and loose bodies tumbled from side to side. + +The boatswain performed prodigious feats of strength. With his long arms +open, and each great paw clutching at a stanchion, he stopped the rush +of seven entwined Chinamen rolling like a boulder. His joints cracked; +he said, “Ha!” and they flew apart. But the carpenter showed the greater +intelligence. Without saying a word to anybody he went back into the +alleyway, to fetch several coils of cargo gear he had seen there--chain +and rope. With these life-lines were rigged. + +There was really no resistance. The struggle, however it began, had +turned into a scramble of blind panic. If the coolies had started up +after their scattered dollars they were by that time fighting only +for their footing. They took each other by the throat merely to save +themselves from being hurled about. Whoever got a hold anywhere would +kick at the others who caught at his legs and hung on, till a roll sent +them flying together across the deck. + +The coming of the white devils was a terror. Had they come to kill? The +individuals torn out of the ruck became very limp in the seamen's hands: +some, dragged aside by the heels, were passive, like dead bodies, with +open, fixed eyes. Here and there a coolie would fall on his knees as if +begging for mercy; several, whom the excess of fear made unruly, were +hit with hard fists between the eyes, and cowered; while those who were +hurt 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 the +chests 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 of +encouragement that sounded like promises of evil. They sat on the deck +in ghastly, drooping rows, and at the end the carpenter, with two hands +to help him, moved busily from place to place, setting taut and hitching +the life-lines. The boatswain, with one leg and one arm embracing a +stanchion, struggled with a lamp pressed to his breast, trying to get +a light, and growling all the time like an industrious gorilla. The +figures 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. Now +and then a sailor would stagger towards the doorway with his arms full +of rubbish; and dolorous, slanting eyes followed his movements. + +With every roll of the ship the long rows of sitting Celestials would +sway forward brokenly, and her headlong dives knocked together the line +of shaven polls from end to end. When the wash of water rolling on the +deck died away for a moment, it seemed to Jukes, yet quivering from his +exertions, that in his mad struggle down there he had overcome the wind +somehow: that a silence had fallen upon the ship, a silence in which the +sea 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 heads +and drooping shoulders. Here and there a coolie sobbed for his breath. +Where the high light fell, Jukes could see the salient ribs of one, the +yellow, wistful face of another; bowed necks; or would meet a dull stare +directed at his face. He was amazed that there had been no corpses; but +the lot of them seemed at their last gasp, and they appeared to him more +pitiful than if they had been all dead. + +Suddenly one of the coolies began to speak. The light came and went on +his lean, straining face; he threw his head up like a baying hound. From +the bunker came the sounds of knocking and the tinkle of some dollars +rolling loose; he stretched out his arm, his mouth yawned black, and the +incomprehensible guttural hooting sounds, that did not seem to belong to +a human language, penetrated Jukes with a strange emotion as if a brute +had tried to be eloquent. + +Two more started mouthing what seemed to Jukes fierce denunciations; the +others stirred with grunts and growls. Jukes ordered the hands out of +the 'tweendecks hurriedly. He left last himself, backing through the +door, while the grunts rose to a loud murmur and hands were extended +after him as after a malefactor. The boatswain shot the bolt, and +remarked uneasily, “Seems as if the wind had dropped, sir.” + +The seamen were glad to get back into the alleyway. Secretly each of +them thought that at the last moment he could rush out on deck--and +that was a comfort. There is something horribly repugnant in the idea +of being drowned under a deck. Now they had done with the Chinamen, they +again became conscious of the ship's position. + +Jukes on coming out of the alleyway found himself up to the neck in +the noisy water. He gained the bridge, and discovered he could detect +obscure shapes as if his sight had become preternaturally acute. He saw +faint outlines. They recalled not the familiar aspect of the Nan-Shan, +but something remembered--an old dismantled steamer he had seen years +ago rotting on a mudbank. She recalled that wreck. + +There was no wind, not a breath, except the faint currents created by +the lurches of the ship. The smoke tossed out of the funnel was settling +down upon her deck. He breathed it as he passed forward. He felt the +deliberate throb of the engines, and heard small sounds that seemed to +have survived the great uproar: the knocking of broken fittings, the +rapid tumbling of some piece of wreckage on the bridge. He perceived +dimly the squat shape of his captain holding on to a twisted +bridge-rail, motionless and swaying as if rooted to the planks. The +unexpected 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 to +the books the worst is not over yet.” + +“If most of them hadn't been half dead with seasickness and fright, not +one 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't +find everything in books.” + +“Why, I believe they would have risen on us if I hadn't ordered the +hands 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. It +seemed 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 stars +fell upon the black sea, rising and falling confusedly. Sometimes the +head of a watery cone would topple on board and mingle with the rolling +flurry of foam on the swamped deck; and the Nan-Shan wallowed heavily at +the bottom of a circular cistern of clouds. This ring of dense vapours, +gyrating madly round the calm of the centre, encompassed the ship like +a motionless and unbroken wall of an aspect inconceivably sinister. +Within, the sea, as if agitated by an internal commotion, leaped in +peaked mounds that jostled each other, slapping heavily against her +sides; and a low moaning sound, the infinite plaint of the storm's +fury, came from beyond the limits of the menacing calm. Captain MacWhirr +remained silent, and Jukes' ready ear caught suddenly the faint, +long-drawn roar of some immense wave rushing unseen under that thick +blackness, which made the appalling boundary of his vision. + +“Of course,” he started resentfully, “they thought we had caught at the +chance to plunder them. Of course! You said--pick up the money. Easier +said 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 attempting +to look at Jukes. “Had to do what's fair.” + +“We shall find yet there's the devil to pay when this is over,” said +Jukes, feeling very sore. “Let them only recover a bit, and you'll +see. They will fly at our throats, sir. Don't forget, sir, she isn't +a British ship now. These brutes know it well, too. The damned Siamese +flag.” + +“We are on board, all the same,” remarked Captain MacWhirr. + +“The trouble's not over yet,” insisted Jukes, prophetically, reeling and +catching 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 the +storm were sure to pounce upon him as soon as he had been left alone +with the ship. + +He watched her, battered and solitary, labouring heavily in a wild scene +of mountainous black waters lit by the gleams of distant worlds. She +moved slowly, breathing into the still core of the hurricane the excess +of her strength in a white cloud of steam--and the deep-toned vibration +of the escape was like the defiant trumpeting of a living creature of +the sea impatient for the renewal of the contest. It ceased suddenly. +The still air moaned. Above Jukes' head a few stars shone into a pit +of black vapours. The inky edge of the cloud-disc frowned upon the ship +under the patch of glittering sky. The stars, too, seemed to look at her +intently, as if for the last time, and the cluster of their splendour +sat 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 live +tidily. 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, and +puckering the corners of his eyes, held out the little flame towards +the barometer whose glittering top of glass and metals nodded at him +continuously. + +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 the +top. His eyes looked at it, narrowed with attention, as if expecting +an imperceptible sign. With his grave face he resembled a booted and +misshapen pagan burning incense before the oracle of a Joss. There was +no mistake. It was the lowest reading he had ever seen in his life. + +Captain MacWhirr emitted a low whistle. He forgot himself till the flame +diminished to a blue spark, burnt his fingers and vanished. Perhaps +something had gone wrong with the thing! + +There was an aneroid glass screwed above the couch. He turned that +way, struck another match, and discovered the white face of the other +instrument looking at him from the bulkhead, meaningly, not to be +gainsaid, as though the wisdom of men were made unerring by the +indifference of matter. There was no room for doubt now. Captain +MacWhirr pshawed at it, and threw the match down. + +The worst was to come, then--and if the books were right this worst +would be very bad. The experience of the last six hours had enlarged his +conception of what heavy weather could be like. “It'll be terrific,” he +pronounced, mentally. He had not consciously looked at anything by the +light of the matches except at the barometer; and yet somehow he had +seen that his water-bottle and the two tumblers had been flung out of +their stand. It seemed to give him a more intimate knowledge of the +tossing the ship had gone through. “I wouldn't have believed it,” he +thought. And his table had been cleared, too; his rulers, his pencils, +the inkstand--all the things that had their safe appointed places--they +were gone, as if a mischievous hand had plucked them out one by one +and flung them on the wet floor. The hurricane had broken in upon the +orderly arrangements of his privacy. This had never happened before, and +the feeling of dismay reached the very seat of his composure. And the +worst was to come yet! He was glad the trouble in the 'tween-deck had +been discovered in time. If the ship had to go after all, then, at +least, she wouldn't be going to the bottom with a lot of people in +her fighting teeth and claw. That would have been odious. And in that +feeling there was a humane intention and a vague sense of the fitness of +things. + +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 the +matchbox in its corner of the shelf. There were always matches there--by +his order. The steward had his instructions impressed upon him long +before. “A box . . . just there, see? Not so very full . . . where I can +put my hand on it, steward. Might want a light in a hurry. Can't tell on +board 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 its +place scrupulously. He did so now, but before he removed his hand it +occurred to him that perhaps he would never have occasion to use that +box any more. The vividness of the thought checked him and for an +infinitesimal fraction of a second his fingers closed again on the small +object as though it had been the symbol of all these little habits that +chain us to the weary round of life. He released it at last, and letting +himself fall on the settee, listened for the first sounds of returning +wind. + +Not yet. He heard only the wash of water, the heavy splashes, the dull +shocks of the confused seas boarding his ship from all sides. She would +never have a chance to clear her decks. + +But the quietude of the air was startlingly tense and unsafe, like a +slender hair holding a sword suspended over his head. By this awful +pause the storm penetrated the defences of the man and unsealed his +lips. 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 if +withdrawn from the very current of his own existence, where such freaks +as talking to himself surely had no place. His palms reposed on his +knees, he bowed his short neck and puffed heavily, surrendering to +a strange sensation of weariness he was not enlightened enough to +recognize for the fatigue of mental stress. + +From where he sat he could reach the door of a washstand locker. There +should have been a towel there. There was. Good. . . . He took it out, +wiped his face, and afterwards went on rubbing his wet head. He towelled +himself with energy in the dark, and then remained motionless with the +towel on his knees. A moment passed, of a stillness so profound that +no one could have guessed there was a man sitting in that cabin. Then a +murmur arose. + +“She may come out of it yet.” + +When Captain MacWhirr came out on deck, which he did brusquely, as +though he had suddenly become conscious of having stayed away too long, +the calm had lasted already more than fifteen minutes--long enough to +make itself intolerable even to his imagination. Jukes, motionless on +the forepart of the bridge, began to speak at once. His voice, blank and +forced as though he were talking through hard-set teeth, seemed to flow +away 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 have +had 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 your +head and make you jumpy. It will be bad, and there's an end. If we only +can 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 the +silence were unbearable. + +“Are you thinking of the coolies, sir? I rigged lifelines all ways +across that 'tween-deck.” + +“Did you? Good idea, Mr. Jukes.” + +“I didn't . . . think you cared to . . . know,” said Jukes--the lurching +of the ship cut his speech as though somebody had been jerking him +around while he talked--“how I got on with . . . that infernal job. We +did it. And it may not matter in the end.” + +“Had to do what's fair, for all--they are only Chinamen. Give them the +same chance with ourselves--hang it all. She isn't lost yet. Bad enough +to be shut up below in a gale--” + +“That's what I thought when you gave me the job, sir,” interjected +Jukes, moodily. + +“--without being battered to pieces,” pursued Captain MacWhirr with +rising vehemence. “Couldn't let that go on in my ship, if I knew she +hadn'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, struggled +with the colossal depth of blackness hanging over the ship--and went +out. + +“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's +storm-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 take +away--unless you or me.” + +“Both, sir,” whispered Jukes, breathlessly. + +“You are always meeting trouble half way, Jukes,” Captain MacWhirr +remonstrated quaintly. “Though it's a fact that the second mate is no +good. 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, mumbling +rather fast. “Keep her facing it. They may say what they like, but the +heaviest seas run with the wind. Facing it--always facing it--that's the +way to get through. You are a young sailor. Face it. That's enough for +any 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 an +answer. + +For some reason Jukes experienced an access of confidence, a sensation +that came from outside like a warm breath, and made him feel equal to +every 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 safe +in 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 in +her depths, shaking a white plummet of steam into the night, and +Jukes' thought skimmed like a bird through the engine-room, where Mr. +Rout--good man--was ready. When the rumbling ceased it seemed to him +that there was a pause of every sound, a dead pause in which Captain +MacWhirr's voice rang out startlingly. + +“What's that? A puff of wind?”--it spoke much louder than Jukes had ever +heard 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 be +distinguished a drowsy waking plaint passing on, and far off the growth +of a multiple clamour, marching and expanding. There was the throb as +of many drums in it, a vicious rushing note, and like the chant of a +tramping multitude. + +Jukes could no longer see his captain distinctly. The darkness was +absolutely piling itself upon the ship. At most he made out movements, a +hint of elbows spread out, of a head thrown up. + +Captain MacWhirr was trying to do up the top button of his oilskin coat +with unwonted haste. The hurricane, with its power to madden the seas, +to sink ships, to uproot trees, to overturn strong walls and dash the +very birds of the air to the ground, had found this taciturn man in +its path, and, doing its utmost, had managed to wring out a few words. +Before the renewed wrath of winds swooped on his ship, Captain MacWhirr +was moved to declare, in a tone of vexation, as it were: “I wouldn't +like 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 on +shore, 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 the +secondary batteries of a cruiser. A hail of minor shells could not have +given her upper works a more broken, torn, and devastated aspect: and +she had about her the worn, weary air of ships coming from the far ends +of the world--and indeed with truth, for in her short passage she had +been 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 the +earth. She was incrusted and gray with salt to the trucks of her masts +and 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 the +sea and brought her in here for salvage.” And further, excited by the +felicity of his own wit, he offered to give five pounds for her--“as she +stands.” + +Before she had been quite an hour at rest, a meagre little man, with a +red-tipped nose and a face cast in an angry mould, landed from a sampan +on the quay of the Foreign Concession, and incontinently turned to shake +his fist at her. + +A tall individual, with legs much too thin for a rotund stomach, and +with watery eyes, strolled up and remarked, “Just left her--eh? Quick +work.” + +He wore a soiled suit of blue flannel with a pair of dirty cricketing +shoes; a dingy gray moustache drooped from his lip, and daylight could +be 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 the +Nan-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 there +that ain't fit to have the command of a scow,” he declared, quivering +with passion, while the other looked about listlessly. + +“Is there?” + +But he caught sight on the quay of a heavy seaman's chest, painted brown +under a fringed sailcloth cover, and lashed with new manila line. He +eyed it with awakened interest. + +“I would talk and raise trouble if it wasn't for that damned Siamese +flag. Nobody to go to--or I would make it hot for him. The fraud! Told +his 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! You +can't think . . .” + +“Got your money all right?” inquired his seedy acquaintance suddenly. + +“Yes. Paid me off on board,” raged the second mate. “'Get your breakfast +on shore,' says he.” + +“Mean skunk!” commented the tall man, vaguely, and passed his tongue on +his 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 about +sympathetically. “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 place +where 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't +been 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 disturb +Captain MacWhirr. The steward found in the letter he wrote, in a tidy +chart-room, passages of such absorbing interest that twice he was +nearly caught in the act. But Mrs. MacWhirr, in the drawing-room of the +forty-pound house, stifled a yawn--perhaps out of self-respect--for she +was alone. + +She reclined in a plush-bottomed and gilt hammock-chair near a tiled +fireplace, with Japanese fans on the mantel and a glow of coals in the +grate. Lifting her hands, she glanced wearily here and there into the +many pages. It was not her fault they were so prosy, so completely +uninteresting--from “My darling wife” at the beginning, to “Your loving +husband” at the end. She couldn't be really expected to understand all +these ship affairs. She was glad, of course, to hear from him, but she +had 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 twenty +minutes,” she read perfunctorily; and the next words her thoughtless +eyes caught, on the top of another page, were: “see you and the children +again. . . .” She had a movement of impatience. He was always thinking +of coming home. He had never had such a good salary before. What was the +matter now? + +It did not occur to her to turn back overleaf to look. She would have +found it recorded there that between 4 and 6 A. M. on December 25th, +Captain MacWhirr did actually think that his ship could not possibly +live another hour in such a sea, and that he would never see his wife +and children again. Nobody was to know this (his letters got mislaid +so quickly)--nobody whatever but the steward, who had been greatly +impressed by that disclosure. So much so, that he tried to give the cook +some idea of the “narrow squeak we all had” by saying solemnly, “The old +man himself had a dam' poor opinion of our chance.” + +“How do you know?” asked, contemptuously, the cook, an old soldier. “He +hasn't told you, maybe?” + +“Well, he did give me a hint to that effect,” the steward brazened it +out. + +“Get along with you! He will be coming to tell me next,” jeered the old +cook, 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 done +the 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 was +set at ease, and a black marble clock, priced by the local jeweller at +3L. 18s. 6d., had a discreet stealthy tick. + +The door flew open, and a girl in the long-legged, short-frocked period +of 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 eyes +upon the letter. + +“From father,” murmured Mrs. MacWhirr. “What have you done with your +ribbon?” + +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 a +wandering indifference, and Mrs. MacWhirr surveyed her with fond pride. + +“Go and get your hat,” she said after a while. “I am going out to do +some shopping. There is a sale at Linom's.” + +“Oh, how jolly!” uttered the child, impressively, in unexpectedly grave +vibrating tones, and bounded out of the room. + +It was a fine afternoon, with a gray sky and dry sidewalks. Outside the +draper's Mrs. MacWhirr smiled upon a woman in a black mantle of generous +proportions armoured in jet and crowned with flowers blooming falsely +above a bilious matronly countenance. They broke into a swift little +babble of greetings and exclamations both together, very hurried, as if +the street were ready to yawn open and swallow all that pleasure before +it could be expressed. + +Behind them the high glass doors were kept on the swing. People couldn't +pass, men stood aside waiting patiently, and Lydia was absorbed in +poking the end of her parasol between the stone flags. Mrs. MacWhirr +talked rapidly. + +“Thank you very much. He's not coming home yet. Of course it's very sad +to 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,” she +added, beamingly, as if poor MacWhirr had been away touring in China for +the sake of his health. + +Neither was the chief engineer coming home yet. Mr. Rout knew too well +the value of a good billet. + +“Solomon says wonders will never cease,” cried Mrs. Rout joyously at the +old 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. “That +captain 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 silvery +head, and that air of inward stillness characteristic of very old +people who seem lost in watching the last flickers of life. “I think I +remember.” + +Solomon Rout, Old Sol, Father Sol, the Chief, “Rout, good man”--Mr. +Rout, the condescending and paternal friend of youth, had been the baby +of her many children--all dead by this time. And she remembered him best +as a boy of ten--long before he went away to serve his apprenticeship in +some great engineering works in the North. She had seen so little of him +since, she had gone through so many years, that she had now to retrace +her 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 strange +man. + +Mrs. Rout junior was disappointed. “H'm. H'm.” She turned the page. “How +provoking! He doesn't say what it is. Says I couldn't understand how +much there was in it. Fancy! What could it be so very clever? What a +wretched man not to tell us!” + +She read on without further remark soberly, and at last sat looking +into the fire. The chief wrote just a word or two of the typhoon; +but something had moved him to express an increased longing for the +companionship of the jolly woman. “If it hadn't been that mother must be +looked after, I would send you your passage-money to-day. You could set +up a small house out here. I would have a chance to see you sometimes +then. 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 in +the Western Ocean trade imparted it freely to the other officers of his +liner. “A chap I know writes to me about an extraordinary affair that +happened on board his ship in that typhoon--you know--that we read of +in the papers two months ago. It's the funniest thing! Just see for +yourself what he says. I'll show you his letter.” + +There were phrases in it calculated to give the impression of +light-hearted, indomitable resolution. Jukes had written them in good +faith, for he felt thus when he wrote. He described with lurid effect +the scenes in the 'tween-deck. “. . . It struck me in a flash that +those confounded Chinamen couldn't tell we weren't a desperate kind of +robbers. 'Tisn't good to part the Chinaman from his money if he is the +stronger party. We need have been desperate indeed to go thieving in +such weather, but what could these beggars know of us? So, without +thinking of it twice, I got the hands away in a jiffy. Our work was +done--that the old man had set his heart on. We cleared out without +staying to inquire how they felt. I am convinced that if they had not +been so unmercifully shaken, and afraid--each individual one of them +--to stand up, we would have been torn to pieces. Oh! It was pretty +complete, I can tell you; and you may run to and fro across the Pond to +the 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, and +went on thus: + +“It was when the weather quieted down that the situation became +confoundedly delicate. It wasn't made any better by us having been +lately transferred to the Siamese flag; though the skipper can't see +that 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 end +of it. You might just as well try to make a bedpost understand. But +apart from this it is an infernally lonely state for a ship to be going +about the China seas with no proper consuls, not even a gunboat of her +own anywhere, nor a body to go to in case of some trouble. + +“My notion was to keep these Johnnies under hatches for another fifteen +hours or so; as we weren't much farther than that from Fu-chau. We would +find there, most likely, some sort of a man-of-war, and once under +her guns we were safe enough; for surely any skipper of a +man-of-war--English, French or Dutch--would see white men through as +far as row on board goes. We could get rid of them and their money +afterwards by delivering them to their Mandarin or Taotai, or whatever +they call these chaps in goggles you see being carried about in +sedan-chairs through their stinking streets. + +“The old man wouldn't see it somehow. He wanted to keep the matter +quiet. He got that notion into his head, and a steam windlass couldn't +drag it out of him. He wanted as little fuss made as possible, for the +sake of the ship's name and for the sake of the owners--'for the sake of +all concerned,' says he, looking at me very hard. + +“It made me angry hot. Of course you couldn't keep a thing like that +quiet; but the chests had been secured in the usual manner and were safe +enough for any earthly gale, while this had been an altogether fiendish +business I couldn't give you even an idea of. + +“Meantime, I could hardly keep on my feet. None of us had a spell of +any sort for nearly thirty hours, and there the old man sat rubbing his +chin, rubbing the top of his head, and so bothered he didn't even think +of pulling his long boots off. + +“'I hope, sir,' says I, 'you won't be letting them out on deck before we +make ready for them in some shape or other.' Not, mind you, that I felt +very sanguine about controlling these beggars if they meant to take +charge. A trouble with a cargo of Chinamen is no child's play. I was +dam' tired, too. 'I wish,' said I, 'you would let us throw the whole +lot of these dollars down to them and leave them to fight it out amongst +themselves, while we get a rest.' + +“'Now you talk wild, Jukes,' says he, looking up in his slow way that +makes you ache all over, somehow. 'We must plan out something that would +be fair to all parties.' + +“I had no end of work on hand, as you may imagine, so I set the hands +going, and then I thought I would turn in a bit. I hadn't been asleep in +my bunk ten minutes when in rushes the steward and begins to pull at my +leg. + +“'For God's sake, Mr. Jukes, come out! Come on deck quick, sir. Oh, do +come out!' + +“The fellow scared all the sense out of me. I didn't know what had +happened: another hurricane--or what. Could hear no wind. + +“'The Captain's letting them out. Oh, he is letting them out! Jump on +deck, sir, and save us. The chief engineer has just run below for his +revolver.' + +“That's what I understood the fool to say. However, Father Rout swears +he went in there only to get a clean pocket-handkerchief. Anyhow, I made +one jump into my trousers and flew on deck aft. There was certainly a +good deal of noise going on forward of the bridge. Four of the hands +with the boss'n were at work abaft. I passed up to them some of the +rifles all the ships on the China coast carry in the cabin, and led them +on the bridge. On the way I ran against Old Sol, looking startled and +sucking at an unlighted cigar. + +“'Come along,' I shouted to him. + +“We charged, the seven of us, up to the chart-room. All was over. There +stood the old man with his sea-boots still drawn up to the hips and +in shirt-sleeves--got warm thinking it out, I suppose. Bun Hin's dandy +clerk at his elbow, as dirty as a sweep, was still green in the face. I +could 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 my +tongue. 'For God's sake, Mr. Jukes,' says he, 'do take away these rifles +from 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 want +you up here to help me and Bun Hin's Chinaman to count that money. You +wouldn't mind lending a hand, too, Mr. Rout, now you are here. The more +of us the better.' + +“He had settled it all in his mind while I was having a snooze. Had we +been an English ship, or only going to land our cargo of coolies in an +English port, like Hong-Kong, for instance, there would have been no +end of inquiries and bother, claims for damages and so on. But these +Chinamen know their officials better than we do. + +“The hatches had been taken off already, and they were all on deck after +a night and a day down below. It made you feel queer to see so many +gaunt, wild faces together. The beggars stared about at the sky, at the +sea, at the ship, as though they had expected the whole thing to have +been blown to pieces. And no wonder! They had had a doing that would +have shaken the soul out of a white man. But then they say a Chinaman +has 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 his +eye all but knocked out. It stood out of his head the size of half a +hen'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 and +talking to the others as if nothing had been the matter. They made a +great hubbub amongst themselves, and whenever the old man showed his +bald head on the foreside of the bridge, they would all leave off jawing +and look at him from below. + +“It seems that after he had done his thinking he made that Bun Hin's +fellow go down and explain to them the only way they could get their +money back. He told me afterwards that, all the coolies having worked in +the same place and for the same length of time, he reckoned he would be +doing the fair thing by them as near as possible if he shared all the +cash we had picked up equally among the lot. You couldn't tell one man's +dollars from another's, he said, and if you asked each man how much +money he brought on board he was afraid they would lie, and he would +find himself a long way short. I think he was right there. As to giving +up the money to any Chinese official he could scare up in Fu-chau, he +said he might just as well put the lot in his own pocket at once for all +the good it would be to them. I suppose they thought so, too. + +“We finished the distribution before dark. It was rather a sight: the +sea running high, the ship a wreck to look at, these Chinamen staggering +up on the bridge one by one for their share, and the old man still +booted, and in his shirt-sleeves, busy paying out at the chartroom door, +perspiring like anything, and now and then coming down sharp on myself +or Father Rout about one thing or another not quite to his mind. He took +the 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 most +damaged coolies, one to each. We turned-to afterwards, and shovelled +out on deck heaps of wet rags, all sorts of fragments of things without +shape, and that you couldn't give a name to, and let them settle the +ownership themselves. + +“This certainly is coming as near as can be to keeping the thing quiet +for the benefit of all concerned. What's your opinion, you pampered +mail-boat swell? The old chief says that this was plainly the only thing +that could be done. The skipper remarked to me the other day, 'There are +things you find nothing about in books.' I think that he got out of it +very well for such a stupid man.” + + + + +[The other stories included in this volume (“Amy Foster,” “Falk: A +Reminiscence,” and “To-morrow”) being already available in another +volume, have not been entered here.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Typhoon, by Joseph Conrad + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1142 *** |