章节正文
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 internalcommotion, 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, longdrawn 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 deeptoned 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
waterbottle 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
"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 internalcommotion, 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, longdrawn 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 deeptoned 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
waterbottle 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
- whisper [´wispə]
v.耳语 n.低语；沙沙声 (初中英语单词) - circular [´sə:kjulə] a.圆形的 n.通知 (初中英语单词)
- aspect [´æspekt] n.面貌；神色；方向 (初中英语单词)
- immense [i´mens] a.广大的，无限的 (初中英语单词)
- excess [´ekses] n.超过 a.过分的 (初中英语单词)
- contest [kən´test, ´kɔntest] v.争辩 n.争夺；竞赛 (初中英语单词)
- cluster [´klʌstə] n.一串 v.群集；丛生 (初中英语单词)
- whistle [´wisəl] v.吹哨 n.口哨；汽笛 (初中英语单词)
- instrument [´instrumənt] n.仪器；手段；乐器 (初中英语单词)
- wisdom [´wizdəm] n.智慧，聪明，才智 (初中英语单词)
- intimate [´intimit] a.亲密的 n.知己 (初中英语单词)
- dismay [dis´mei] n.惊慌 vt.使惊慌 (初中英语单词)
- slender [´slendə] a.细长的；微薄的 (初中英语单词)
- existence [ig´zistəns] n.存在；生存；生活 (初中英语单词)
- sensation [sen´seiʃən] n.感觉；轰动；轰动一时 (初中英语单词)
- mental [´mentl] a.精神的；心理的 (初中英语单词)
- energy [´enədʒi] n.活力，精力；能力 (初中英语单词)
- conscious [´kɔnʃəs] a.意识的；自觉的 (初中英语单词)
- relieve [ri´li:v] v.救济，援救；减轻 (初中英语单词)
- abruptly [ə´brʌptli] ad.突然地；粗鲁地 (初中英语单词)
- motionless [´məuʃənləs] a.静止的；固定的 (高中英语单词)
- internal [in´tə:nl] a.内部的；国内的 (高中英语单词)
- infinite [´infinit] a.无限的，无穷的 (高中英语单词)
- plunder [´plʌndə] v.&n.掠夺；盗窃 (高中英语单词)
- damned [dæmd] a.该死的 ad.非常，极 (高中英语单词)
- solitary [´sɔlitəri] a.独居的；孤独的 (高中英语单词)
- impatient [im´peiʃənt] a.不耐烦的，急躁的 (高中英语单词)
- disorder [dis´ɔ:də] n.杂乱 vt.扰乱 (高中英语单词)
- incense [´insens, in´sens] n.香(气) vt.激怒 (高中英语单词)
- indifference [in´difrəns] n.冷淡；无足轻重 (高中英语单词)
- conception [kən´sepʃən] n.构思；概念；怀孕 (高中英语单词)
- pronounced [prə´naunst] a.发出音的；显著的 (高中英语单词)
- steward [´stju:əd] n.管家；服务员 (高中英语单词)
- fraction [´frækʃən] n.小部分；一点儿 (高中英语单词)
- solitude [´sɔlitju:d] n.孤独；寂寞；荒凉 (高中英语单词)
- unseen [,ʌn´si:n] a.未看见的 (高中英语单词)
- fatigue [fə´ti:g] n.&vt.(使)疲劳(劳累) (高中英语单词)
- stillness [´stilnis] n.不动；无声，寂静 (高中英语单词)
- profound [prə´faund] a.深奥的；渊博的 (高中英语单词)
- alongside [əlɔŋ´said] ad.在旁 prep.横靠 (高中英语单词)
- aperture [´æpətjuə] n.孔；口径 (英语四级单词)
- sinister [´sinistə] a.阴险的；不吉的 (英语四级单词)
- commotion [kə´məuʃən] n.混乱；骚动 (英语四级单词)
- blackness [´blæknis] n.黑色；阴险 (英语四级单词)
- hurriedly [´hʌridli] ad.仓促地，忙乱地 (英语四级单词)
- mountainous [´mauntinəs] a.山多的；巨大的 (英语四级单词)
- hurricane [´hʌrikən] n.飓风 (英语四级单词)
- vibration [vai´breiʃən] n.颤动；振动；摇动 (英语四级单词)
- intently [in´tentli] ad.专心地 (英语四级单词)
- armchair [´ɑ:mtʃeə] n.扶手椅 (英语四级单词)
- privacy [´praivəsi, -pri] n.隐退；独处；秘密 (英语四级单词)
- odious [´əudiəs] a.可憎的；丑恶的 (英语四级单词)
- essence [´esəns] n.本质；要素；精华 (英语四级单词)
- weariness [wiərinis] n.疲倦；厌烦 (英语四级单词)
- intolerable [in´tɔlərəb(ə)l] a.无法忍受的 (英语四级单词)
- watchful [´wɔtʃfəl] a.注意的；戒备的 (英语四级单词)
- watery [´wɔ:təri] a.水的；像水的 (英语六级单词)
- pounce [pauns] n.突然袭击；攻击 (英语六级单词)
- diadem [´daiədem] n.王冠 (英语六级单词)
- incredibly [in´kredəbli] ad.难以置信地 (英语六级单词)
- fitness [fitnis] n.适合；健康 (英语六级单词)
- extended [iks´tendid] a.伸长的；广大的 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- infernal [in´fə:nəl] a.地狱的，恶魔似的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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