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" target="_blank" title="ad.立即，立刻">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" target="_blank" title="n.凶恶，残忍">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 fiercemutter, 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