V
He waited. Before his eyes the engines turned with slow labour, that inthe moment of going off into a mad fling would stop dead at Mr. Rout'sshout, "Look out, Beale!" They paused in an intelligent immobility,stilled in mid-stroke, a heavy crank arrested on the cant, as ifconscious of danger and the passage of time. Then, with a "Now, then!"from the chief, and the sound of a breath expelled through clenchedteeth, they would accomplish the interrupted revolution and beginanother.
There was the prudent sagacity of wisdom and the deliberation ofenormous strength in their movements. This was their work--this patientcoaxing of a distracted ship over the fury of the waves and into thevery eye of the wind. At times Mr. Rout's chin would sink on his breast,and he watched them with knitted eyebrows as if lost in thought.
The voice that kept the hurricane out of Jukes' ear began: "Take thehands with you . . . ," and left off unexpectedly.
"What could I do with them, sir?"
A harsh, abrupt, imperious clang exploded suddenly. The three pairs ofeyes flew up to the telegraph dial to see the hand jump from FULLto STOP, as if snatched by a devil. And then these three men in theengineroom had the intimate sensation of a check upon the ship, of astrange shrinking, as if she had gathered herself for a desperate leap.
"Stop her!" bellowed Mr. Rout.
Nobody--not even Captain MacWhirr, who alone on deck had caught sight ofa white line of foam coming on at such a height that he couldn't believehis eyes--nobody was to know the steepness of that sea and the awfuldepth of the hollow the hurricane had scooped out behind the runningwall of water.
It raced to meet the ship, and, with a pause, as of girding the loins,the Nan-Shan lifted her bows and leaped. The flames in all the lampssank, darkening the engine-room. One went out. With a tearing crash anda swirling, raving tumult, tons of water fell upon the deck, as thoughthe ship had darted under the foot of a cataract.
Down there they looked at each other, stunned.
"Swept from end to end, by God!" bawled Jukes.
She dipped into the hollow straight down, as if going over the edge ofthe world. The engine-room toppled forward menacingly, like the insideof a tower nodding in an earthquake. An awful racket, of iron thingsfalling, came from the stokehold. She hung on this appalling slant longenough for Beale to drop on his hands and knees and begin to crawl as ifhe meant to fly on all fours out of the engine-room, and for Mr. Routto turn his head slowly, rigid, cavernous, with the lower jaw dropping.Jukes had shut his eyes, and his face in a moment became hopelesslyblank and gentle, like the face of a blind man.
At last she rose slowly, staggering, as if she had to lift a mountainwith her bows.
Mr. Rout shut his mouth; Jukes blinked; and little Beale stood uphastily.
"Another one like this, and that's the last of her," cried the chief.
He and Jukes looked at each other, and the same thought came into theirheads. The Captain! Everything must have been swept away. Steering-geargone--ship like a log. All over directly.
"Rush!" ejaculated Mr. Rout thickly, glaring with enlarged, doubtfuleyes at Jukes, who answered him by an irresolute glance.
The clang of the telegraph gong soothed them instantly. The black handdropped in a flash from STOP to FULL.
"Now then, Beale!" cried Mr. Rout.
The steam hissed low. The piston-rods slid in and out. Jukes put hisear to the tube. The voice was ready for him. It said: "Pick up all themoney. Bear a hand now. I'll want you up here." And that was all.
"Sir?" called up Jukes. There was no answer.
He staggered away like a defeated man from the field of battle. He hadgot, in some way or other, a cut above his left eyebrow--a cut to thebone. He was not aware of it in the least: quantities of the China Sea,large enough to break his neck for him, had gone over his head, hadcleaned, washed, and salted that wound. It did not bleed, but only gapedred; and this gash over the eye, his dishevelled hair, the disorder ofhis clothes, gave him the aspect of a man worsted in a fight with fists.
"Got to pick up the dollars." He appealed to Mr. Rout, smiling pitifullyat random.
"What's that?" asked Mr. Rout, wildly. "Pick up . . . ? I don't care.. . ." Then, quivering in every muscle, but with an exaggeration ofpaternal tone, "Go away now, for God's sake. You deck people'll driveme silly. There's that second mate been going for the old man. Don't youknow? You fellows are going wrong for want of something to do. . . ."
At these words Jukes discovered in himself the beginnings of anger. Wantof something to do--indeed. . . . Full of hot scorn against thechief, he turned to go the way he had come. In the stokehold the plumpdonkeyman toiled with his shovel mutely, as if his tongue had been cutout; but the second was carrying on like a noisy, undaunted maniac, whohad preserved his skill in the art of stoking under a marine boiler.
"Hallo, you wandering officer! Hey! Can't you get some of yourslush-slingers to wind up a few of them ashes? I am getting choked withthem here. Curse it! Hallo! Hey! Remember the articles: Sailors andfiremen to assist each other. Hey! D'ye hear?"
Jukes was climbing out frantically, and the other, lifting up his faceafter him, howled, "Can't you speak? What are you poking about here for?What's your game, anyhow?"
A frenzy possessed Jukes. By the time he was back amongst the men in thedarkness of the alleyway, he felt ready to wring all their necks at theslightest sign of hanging back. The very thought of it exasperated him.He couldn't hang back. They shouldn't.
The impetuosity with which he came amongst them carried them along. Theyhad already been excited and startled at all his comings and goings--bythe fierceness and rapidity of his movements; and more felt than seenin his rushes, he appeared formidable--busied with matters of life anddeath that brooked no delay. At his first word he heard them drop intothe bunker one after another obediently, with heavy thumps.
They were not clear as to what would have to be done. "What is it? Whatis it?" they were asking each other. The boatswain tried to explain;the sounds of a great scuffle surprised them: and the mighty shocks,reverberating awfully in the black bunker, kept them in mind of theirdanger. When the boatswain threw open the door it seemed that an eddy ofthe hurricane, stealing through the iron sides of the ship, had set allthese bodies whirling like dust: there came to them a confused uproar,a tempestuous tumult, a fierce mutter, gusts of screams dying away, andthe tramping of feet mingling with the blows of the sea.
For a moment they glared amazed, blocking the doorway. Jukes pushedthrough them brutally. He said nothing, and simply darted in. Anotherlot of coolies on the ladder, struggling suicidally to break through thebattened hatch to a swamped deck, fell off as before, and he disappearedunder them like a man overtaken by a landslide.
The boatswain yelled excitedly: "Come along. Get the mate out. He'll betrampled to death. Come on."
They charged in, stamping on breasts, on fingers, on faces, catchingtheir feet in heaps of clothing, kicking broken wood; but before theycould get hold of him Jukes emerged waist deep in a multitude of clawinghands. In the instant he had been lost to view, all the buttons of hisjacket had gone, its back had got split up to the collar, his waistcoathad been torn open. The central struggling mass of Chinamen went over tothe roll, dark, indistinct, helpless, with a wild gleam of many eyes inthe dim light of the lamps.
"Leave me alone--damn you. I am all right," screeched Jukes. "Drive themforward. Watch your chance when she pitches. Forward with 'em. Drivethem against the bulkhead. Jam 'em up."
The rush of the sailors into the seething 'tween-deck was like a splashof cold water into a boiling cauldron. The commotion sank for a moment.
The bulk of Chinamen were locked in such a compact scrimmage that,linking their arms and aided by an appalling dive of the ship, theseamen sent it forward in one great shove, like a solid block. Behindtheir backs small clusters and loose bodies tumbled from side to side.
The boatswain performed prodigious feats of strength. With his long armsopen, and each great paw clutching at a
stanchion, he stopped the rushof seven entwined Chinamen rolling like a boulder. His joints cracked;he said, "Ha!" and they flew apart. But the carpenter showed the greaterintelligence. Without saying a word to anybody he went back into thealleyway, to fetch several coils of cargo gear he had seen there--chainand rope. With these life-lines were rigged.
There was really no resistance. The struggle, however it began, hadturned into a scramble of blind panic. If the coolies had started upafter their scattered dollars they were by that time fighting onlyfor their footing. They took each other by the throat merely to savethemselves from being hurled about. Whoever got a hold anywhere wouldkick at the others who caught at his legs and hung on, till a roll sentthem flying together across the deck.
The coming of the white devils was a terror. Had they come to kill? Theindividuals torn out of the ruck became very limp in the seamen's hands:some, dragged aside by the heels, were passive, like dead bodies, withopen, fixed eyes. Here and there a coolie would fall on his knees as ifbegging for mercy; several, whom the excess of fear made unruly, werehit with hard fists between the eyes, and cowered; while those who werehurt submitted to rough handling, blinking rapidly without a plaint.Faces streamed with blood; there were raw places on the shaven heads,scratches, bruises, torn wounds, gashes. The broken porcelain out of thechests was mostly responsible for the latter. Here and there a Chinaman,wild-eyed, with his tail unplaited, nursed a bleeding sole.
They had been ranged closely, after having been shaken into submission,cuffed a little to allay excitement, addressed in gruff words ofencouragement that sounded like promises of evil. They sat on the deckin ghastly, drooping rows, and at the end the carpenter, with two handsto help him, moved busily from place to place, setting taut and hitchingthe life-lines. The boatswain, with one leg and one arm embracing astanchion, struggled with a lamp pressed to his breast, trying to geta light, and growling all the time like an industrious gorilla. Thefigures of seamen stooped repeatedly, with the movements of gleaners,and everything was being flung into the bunker: clothing, smashed wood,broken china, and the dollars, too, gathered up in men's jackets. Nowand then a sailor would stagger towards the doorway with his arms fullof rubbish; and dolorous, slanting eyes followed his movements.
With every roll of the ship the long rows of sitting Celestials wouldsway forward brokenly, and her headlong dives knocked together the lineof shaven polls from end to end. When the wash of water rolling on thedeck died away for a moment, it seemed to Jukes, yet quivering from hisexertions, that in his mad struggle down there he had overcome the windsomehow: that a silence had fallen upon the ship, a silence in which thesea struck thunderously at her sides.
Everything had been cleared out of the 'tween-deck--all the wreckage,as the men said. They stood erect and tottering above the level of headsand drooping shoulders. Here and there a coolie sobbed for his breath.Where the high light fell, Jukes could see the salient ribs of one, theyellow, wistful face of another; bowed necks; or would meet a dull staredirected at his face. He was amazed that there had been no corpses; butthe lot of them seemed at their last gasp, and they appeared to him morepitiful than if they had been all dead.
Suddenly one of the coolies began to speak. The light came and went onhis lean, straining face; he threw his head up like a baying hound. Fromthe bunker came the sounds of knocking and the tinkle of some dollarsrolling loose; he stretched out his arm, his mouth yawned black, and theincomprehensible guttural hooting sounds, that did not seem to belong toa human language, penetrated Jukes with a strange emotion as if a brutehad tried to be eloquent.
Two more started mouthing what seemed to Jukes fierce denunciations; theothers stirred with grunts and growls. Jukes ordered the hands out ofthe 'tweendecks hurriedly. He left last himself, backing through thedoor, while the grunts rose to a loud murmur and hands were extendedafter him as after a malefactor. The boatswain shot the bolt, andremarked uneasily, "Seems as if the wind had dropped, sir."
The seamen were glad to get back into the alleyway. Secretly each ofthem thought that at the last moment he could rush out on deck--andthat was a comfort. There is something horribly repugnant in the ideaof being drowned under a deck. Now they had done with the Chinamen, theyagain became conscious of the ship's position.
Jukes on coming out of the alleyway found himself up to the neck inthe noisy water. He gained the bridge, and discovered he could detectobscure shapes as if his sight had become preternaturally acute. He sawfaint outlines. They recalled not the familiar aspect of the Nan-Shan,but something remembered--an old dismantled steamer he had seen yearsago rotting on a mudbank. She recalled that wreck.
There was no wind, not a breath, except the faint currents created bythe lurches of the ship. The smoke tossed out of the funnel was settlingdown upon her deck. He breathed it as he passed forward. He felt thedeliberate throb of the engines, and heard small sounds that seemed tohave survived the great uproar: the knocking of broken fittings, therapid tumbling of some piece of wreckage on the bridge. He perceiveddimly the squat shape of his captain holding on to a twistedbridge-rail, motionless and swaying as if rooted to the planks. Theunexpected stillness of the air oppressed Jukes.
"We have done it, sir," he gasped.
"Thought you would," said Captain MacWhirr.
"Did you?" murmured Jukes to himself.
"Wind fell all at once," went on the Captain.
Jukes burst out: "If you think it was an easy job--"
But his captain, clinging to the rail, paid no attention. "According tothe books the worst is not over yet."
"If most of them hadn't been half dead with seasickness and fright, notone of us would have come out of that 'tween-deck alive," said Jukes.
"Had to do what's fair by them," mumbled MacWhirr, stolidly. "You don'tfind everything in books."
"Why, I believe they would have risen on us if I hadn't ordered thehands out of that pretty quick," continued Jukes with warmth.
After the whisper of their shouts, their ordinary tones, so distinct,rang out very loud to their ears in the amazing stillness of the air. Itseemed to them they were talking in a dark and echoing vault.
Through a jagged aperture in the dome of clouds the light of a few starsfell upon the black sea, rising and falling confusedly. Sometimes thehead of a watery cone would topple on board and mingle with the rollingflurry of foam on the swamped deck; and the Nan-Shan wallowed heavily atthe bottom of a circular cistern of clouds. This ring of dense vapours,gyrating madly round the calm of the centre, encompassed the ship likea motionless and unbroken wall of an aspect inconceivably sinister.Within, the sea, as if agitated by an internal commotion, leaped inpeaked mounds that jostled each other, slapping heavily against hersides; and a low moaning sound, the infinite plaint of the storm'sfury, came from beyond the limits of the menacing calm. Captain MacWhirrremained silent, and Jukes' ready ear caught suddenly the faint,long-drawn roar of some immense wave rushing unseen under that thickblackness, which made the appalling boundary of his vision.
"Of course," he started resentfully, "they thought we had caught at thechance to plunder them. Of course! You said--pick up the money. Easiersaid than done. They couldn't tell what was in our heads. We came in,smash--right into the middle of them. Had to do it by a rush."
"As long as it's done . . . ," mumbled the Captain, without attemptingto look at Jukes. "Had to do what's fair."
"We shall find yet there's the devil to pay when this is over," saidJukes, feeling very sore. "Let them only recover a bit, and you'llsee. They will fly at our throats, sir. Don't forget, sir, she isn'ta British ship now. These brutes know it well, too. The damned Siameseflag."
"We are on board, all the same," remarked Captain MacWhirr.
"The trouble's not over yet," insisted Jukes, prophetically, reeling andcatching on. "She's a wreck," he added, faintly.
"The trouble's not over yet," assented Captain MacWhirr, half aloud. . . . "Look out for her a minute."
"Are you going off the deck, sir?" asked
Jukes, hurriedly, as if thestorm were sure to pounce upon him as soon as he had been left alonewith the ship.
He watched her, battered and solitary, labouring heavily in a wild sceneof mountainous black waters lit by the gleams of distant worlds. Shemoved slowly, breathing into the still core of the hurricane the excessof her strength in a white cloud of steam--and the deep-toned vibrationof the escape was like the defiant trumpeting of a living creature ofthe sea impatient for the renewal of the contest. It ceased suddenly.The still air moaned. Above Jukes' head a few stars shone into a pitof black vapours. The inky edge of the cloud-disc frowned upon the shipunder the patch of glittering sky. The stars, too, seemed to look at herintently, as if for the last time, and the cluster of their splendoursat like a diadem on a lowering brow.
Captain MacWhirr had gone into the chart-room. There was no light there;but he could feel the disorder of that place where he used to livetidily. His armchair was upset. The books had tumbled out on the floor:he scrunched a piece of glass under his boot. He groped for the matches,and found a box on a shelf with a deep ledge. He struck one, andpuckering the corners of his eyes, held out the little flame towardsthe barometer whose glittering top of glass and metals nodded at himcontinuously.
It stood very low--incredibly low, so low that Captain MacWhirr grunted.The match went out, and hurriedly he extracted another, with thick,stiff fingers.
Again a little flame flared up before the nodding glass and metal of thetop. His eyes looked at it, narrowed with attention, as if expectingan imperceptible sign. With his grave face he resembled a booted andmisshapen pagan burning incense before the oracle of a Joss. There wasno mistake. It was the lowest reading he had ever seen in his life.
Captain MacWhirr emitted a low whistle. He forgot himself till the flamediminished to a blue spark, burnt his fingers and vanished. Perhapssomething had gone wrong with the thing!
There was an aneroid glass screwed above the couch. He turned thatway, struck another match, and discovered the white face of the otherinstrument looking at him from the bulkhead, meaningly, not to begainsaid, as though the wisdom of men were made unerring by theindifference of matter. There was no room for doubt now. CaptainMacWhirr pshawed at it, and threw the match down.
The worst was to come, then--and if the books were right this worstwould be very bad. The experience of the last six hours had enlarged hisconception of what heavy weather could be like. "It'll be terrific," hepronounced, mentally. He had not consciously looked at anything by thelight of the matches except at the barometer; and yet somehow he hadseen that his water-bottle and the two tumblers had been flung out oftheir stand. It seemed to give him a more intimate knowledge of thetossing the ship had gone through. "I wouldn't have believed it," hethought. And his table had been cleared, too; his rulers, his pencils,the inkstand--all the things that had their safe appointed places--theywere gone, as if a mischievous hand had plucked them out one by oneand flung them on the wet floor. The hurricane had broken in upon theorderly arrangements of his privacy. This had never happened before, andthe feeling of dismay reached the very seat of his composure. And theworst was to come yet! He was glad the trouble in the 'tween-deck hadbeen discovered in time. If the ship had to go after all, then, atleast, she wouldn't be going to the bottom with a lot of people inher fighting teeth and claw. That would have been odious. And in thatfeeling there was a humane intention and a vague sense of the fitness ofthings.
These instantaneous thoughts were yet in their essence heavy and slow,partaking of the nature of the man. He extended his hand to put back thematchbox in its corner of the shelf. There were always matches there--byhis order. The steward had his instructions impressed upon him longbefore. "A box . . . just there, see? Not so very full . . . where I canput my hand on it, steward. Might want a light in a hurry. Can't tell onboard ship what you might want in a hurry. Mind, now."
And of course on his side he would be careful to put it back in itsplace scrupulously. He did so now, but before he removed his hand itoccurred to him that perhaps he would never have occasion to use thatbox any more. The vividness of the thought checked him and for aninfinitesimal fraction of a second his fingers closed again on the smallobject as though it had been the symbol of all these little habits thatchain us to the weary round of life. He released it at last, and lettinghimself fall on the settee, listened for the first sounds of returningwind.
Not yet. He heard only the wash of water, the heavy splashes, the dullshocks of the confused seas boarding his ship from all sides. She wouldnever have a chance to clear her decks.
But the quietude of the air was startlingly tense and unsafe, like aslender hair holding a sword suspended over his head. By this awfulpause the storm penetrated the defences of the man and unsealed hislips. He spoke out in the solitude and the pitch darkness of the cabin,as if addressing another being awakened within his breast.
"I shouldn't like to lose her," he said half aloud.
He sat unseen, apart from the sea, from his ship, isolated, as ifwithdrawn from the very current of his own existence, where such freaksas talking to himself surely had no place. His palms reposed on hisknees, he bowed his short neck and puffed heavily, surrendering toa strange sensation of weariness he was not enlightened enough torecognize for the fatigue of mental stress.
From where he sat he could reach the door of a washstand locker. Thereshould have been a towel there. There was. Good. . . . He took it out,wiped his face, and afterwards went on rubbing his wet head. He towelledhimself with energy in the dark, and then remained motionless with thetowel on his knees. A moment passed, of a stillness so profound thatno one could have guessed there was a man sitting in that cabin. Then amurmur arose.
"She may come out of it yet."
When Captain MacWhirr came out on deck, which he did brusquely, asthough he had suddenly become conscious of having stayed away too long,the calm had lasted already more than fifteen minutes--long enough tomake itself intolerable even to his imagination. Jukes, motionless onthe forepart of the bridge, began to speak at once. His voice, blank andforced as though he were talking through hard-set teeth, seemed to flowaway on all sides into the darkness, deepening again upon the sea.
"I had the wheel relieved. Hackett began to sing out that he was done.He's lying in there alongside the steering-gear with a face like death.At first I couldn't get anybody to crawl out and relieve the poor devil.That boss'n's worse than no good, I always said. Thought I would havehad to go myself and haul out one of them by the neck."
"Ah, well," muttered the Captain. He stood watchful by Jukes' side.
"The second mate's in there, too, holding his head. Is he hurt, sir?"
"No--crazy," said Captain MacWhirr, curtly.
"Looks as if he had a tumble, though."
"I had to give him a push," explained the Captain.
Jukes gave an impatient sigh.
"It will come very sudden," said Captain MacWhirr, "and from over there,I fancy. God only knows though. These books are only good to muddle yourhead and make you jumpy. It will be bad, and there's an end. If we onlycan steam her round in time to meet it. . . ."
A minute passed. Some of the stars winked rapidly and vanished.
"You left them pretty safe?" began the Captain abruptly, as though thesilence were unbearable.
"Are you thinking of the coolies, sir? I rigged lifelines all waysacross that 'tween-deck."
"Did you? Good idea, Mr. Jukes."
"I didn't . . . think you cared to . . . know," said Jukes--the lurchingof the ship cut his speech as though somebody had been jerking himaround while he talked--"how I got on with . . . that infernal job. Wedid it. And it may not matter in the end."
"Had to do what's fair, for all--they are only Chinamen. Give them thesame chance with ourselves--hang it all. She isn't lost yet. Bad enoughto be shut up below in a gale--"
"That's what I thought when you gave me the job, sir," interjectedJukes, moodily.
"--without being battered to pieces," pursued
Captain MacWhirr withrising vehemence. "Couldn't let that go on in my ship, if I knew shehadn't five minutes to live. Couldn't bear it, Mr. Jukes."
A hollow echoing noise, like that of a shout rolling in a rocky chasm,approached the ship and went away again. The last star, blurred,enlarged, as if returning to the fiery mist of its beginning, struggledwith the colossal depth of blackness hanging over the ship--and wentout.
"Now for it!" muttered Captain MacWhirr. "Mr. Jukes."
"Here, sir."
The two men were growing indistinct to each other.
"We must trust her to go through it and come out on the other side.That's plain and straight. There's no room for Captain Wilson'sstorm-strategy here."
"No, sir."
"She will be smothered and swept again for hours," mumbled the Captain."There's not much left by this time above deck for the sea to takeaway--unless you or me."
"Both, sir," whispered Jukes, breathlessly.
"You are always meeting trouble half way, Jukes," Captain MacWhirrremonstrated quaintly. "Though it's a fact that the second mate is nogood. D'ye hear, Mr. Jukes? You would be left alone if. . . ."
Captain MacWhirr interrupted himself, and Jukes, glancing on all sides,remained silent.
"Don't you be put out by anything," the Captain continued, mumblingrather fast. "Keep her facing it. They may say what they like, but theheaviest seas run with the wind. Facing it--always facing it--that's theway to get through. You are a young sailor. Face it. That's enough forany man. Keep a cool head."
"Yes, sir," said Jukes, with a flutter of the heart.
In the next few seconds the Captain spoke to the engine-room and got ananswer.
For some reason Jukes experienced an access of confidence, a sensationthat came from outside like a warm breath, and made him feel equal toevery demand. The distant muttering of the darkness stole into his ears.He noted it unmoved, out of that sudden belief in himself, as a man safein a shirt of mail would watch a point.
The ship laboured without intermission amongst the black hills of water,paying with this hard tumbling the price of her life. She rumbled inher depths, shaking a white plummet of steam into the night, andJukes' thought skimmed like a bird through the engine-room, where Mr.Rout--good man--was ready. When the rumbling ceased it seemed to himthat there was a pause of every sound, a dead pause in which CaptainMacWhirr's voice rang out startlingly.
"What's that? A puff of wind?"--it spoke much louder than Jukes had everheard it before--"On the bow. That's right. She may come out of it yet."
The mutter of the winds drew near apace. In the forefront could bedistinguished a drowsy waking plaint passing on, and far off the growthof a multiple clamour, marching and expanding. There was the throb asof many drums in it, a vicious rushing note, and like the chant of atramping multitude.
Jukes could no longer see his captain distinctly. The darkness wasabsolutely piling itself upon the ship. At most he made out movements, ahint of elbows spread out, of a head thrown up.
Captain MacWhirr was trying to do up the top button of his oilskin coatwith unwonted haste. The hurricane, with its power to madden the seas,to sink ships, to uproot trees, to overturn strong walls and dash thevery birds of the air to the ground, had found this taciturn man inits path, and, doing its utmost, had managed to wring out a few words.Before the renewed wrath of winds swooped on his ship, Captain MacWhirrwas moved to declare, in a tone of vexation, as it were: "I wouldn'tlike to lose her."
He was spared that annoyance.