A sea swept over. Jukes understood the boatswain to splutter
that the bridgeladders 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, stirringcluster, 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 viciouspatter

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.