 CHAPTER IV All that the boson, out of a superabundance of yells could make clear to Captain McWherr was the bizarre intelligence that all them Chinaman in the foretween-deck have fetched away, sir. Jukes to Llewod 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 McWherr'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. 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 businessman 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 McWherr'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 seafoam 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 McWherr'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 rigor of dumb attention. Captain McWherr 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 McWherr had his mate's head fixed firm in the crook of his elbow, and pressed it to his yelling lips mysteriously. These Jukes would break in, admonishing hastily, Look out, sir! Or Captain McWherr 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 McWherr would resume his shouts, says, Whole lot! Just away! Or to say! 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 altogether in the dark, and tons of water could be heard scuttling about, as if trying to get at them from above. The Boson 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 Boson turned on him. This called up a shout of execration. The Boson 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 forered, 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 Contumlee. 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 a-thwart ship's coal-bunker which, being at times used as cargo-space, communicated by an iron door with the four tween-deck. It was empty then, and its manhole was the foremost one in the alleyway. The Boson 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 almost want to get you that blamed light you were crying for! He apostolated almost pitifully. Somebody told him to go and put his head in a bag. He regretted that he could not recognise the voice, and that it was too dark to see, otherwise, as he said, he would have put a head on that sun 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 cold, trimmer's slice probably, left down there by somebody. The 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 cold-ust 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-acted 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. Going 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 horse yelling met him, 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 staunchens 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 boson 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 boson's legs, and from his opened hand a bright white disc rolled against the boson'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-side and sliding, inert and struggling, shifted to starboard with a dull, brutal thud. The cries ceased. The boson heard a long moan through the roar and whistling of the wind. He saw an inextricable confusion of heads and shoulders, naked souls kicking upwards, fists raised, tumbling back's legs, pigtail's 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 worthwhile 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 coolest matter to anybody? And when he came out, the extremity of the ship made what went on inside of her a peer-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 wheel-house. In that comparatively sheltered spot he found the second mate. The boson 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. The fall didn't matter. Everybody was going by and by. The boson 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 at the time. Besides, it was difficult to make yourself heard. But he managed to convey the idea that the Chinaman had broken a drift 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 to. He gave no more thought to the coolies. Captain McWher had made jukes understand that he wanted him to go down below to sea. What am I to do then, sir? The trembling of his whole wet body caused jukes' voice to sound like bleeding. See, first, Bosun says a drift. That Bosun is a confounded fool, held 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 was sure to sink. I must know, can't leave. They'll settle, sir. Fight. Bosun says they fight. Why can't I 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 route. 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 McGuire releasing jukes and bending over the Bosun 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 Bosun who was following fell on him. Don't you get up yet, sir? Cried the Bosun. No hurry. A sea swept over. Jukes understood the Bosun 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 smokestack being as likely to go overboard as not. Jukes thought it very possible, and imagined the fires out. The ship helpless. The Bosun, 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, falls, 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 man-holid, sir! They lowered him into the bunker. The Bosun 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 Bosun 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 McWher'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 Bosun, 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 the 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 Bosun peered under his arm. One of the lamps had gone out, broken, perhaps. Rankerous guttural cries burst loudly on their ears and a strange panting noise, the working of all these straining beasts. 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 further off indistinct, others screamed 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 healed 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 boson 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 McWher left alone on the bridge, sidled and staggered as far as the wheel-house. 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, and 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 McWherb wiped his eyes. The sea that had nearly taken him overboard had, to his great annoyance, washed his Salwester 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 and the sting of sprays. He looked as though he had come off sweating from before a furnace. You hear, he muttered heavily. The second mate had found his way into the wheel-house 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, isn'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 meet. 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 downwind, but he was trying to keep her head nor nor east. The rudder might have been gone for all he knew. The fire's out, the engine's 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 wheel-house going. Mountains of water kept on tumbling against it. When the ship took one of her desperate drives, the corners of his lips twitched. Captain McGuire looked up at the wheel-house clock. Screwed to the bulkhead, 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. He won't see it break, he exclaimed. His wrists and his knees could be seen to shake violently. No, not 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 McGuire 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 hurrickan boomed, shaking the little place, which seemed airtight, and the light of the binnacle flickered all the time. You haven't been relieved, Captain McGuire 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. You wouldn't do. No child's play. And the hands are probably busy with a job down below. Think you can. The steering gear leapt into an abrupt short clatter, stopped smouldering like an ember, and the still man with emotionless gaze burst out, as if all the passion in him had gone into his lips. By heaven, sir! I can steer forever if nobody talks to me! Oh, aye, all right! The captain lifted his eyes for the first time to the man. Hack it! And he seemed to dismiss the matter from his mind. He stooped to the engine room speaking tube, blew in and bent his head. Mr. Routt below answered, and at once Captain McWher 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 McWher. Was the mate down there yet? No? Well, he would be presently. Would Mr. Routt 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 Chinaman. They were fighting, it seemed. Couldn't allow fighting, anyhow. Mr. Routt had gone away, and Captain McWher could feel against his ear the pulsation of the engines like the beat of the ship's heart. Mr. Routt's voice down there shouted something distantly. The ship pitched headlong. The pulsation leaped with a hissing tumult, and stopped dead. Captain McWher's face was impassive, and his eyes were fixed aimlessly on the crouching shape of the second mate. Again Mr. Routt's voice cried out in the depths, and the pulsating beats recommenced with slow strokes growing swifter. Mr. Routt had returned to the tube. It doesn't matter much what they do, he said hastily, and then with irritation, she takes those 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 Routt 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. Routt, bending an attentive ear, nutted peevishly something under his breath. But the deliberate voice up there became animated to ask, Jukes turn up yet? Then, after a short wait, I wish he would bare 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. Routt into the engine room, taking his head away. Then up the tube he cried, gone overboard, and clapped his ear too. Lost his nerve. The voice from above continued in a matter-of-fact tone. Damned awkward circumstance. Mr. Routt 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, 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 cold dust on his eyelids like the black penciling of a makeup 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 hand 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 emotionless 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 crankheads 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 too and fro, crossheads nodded, disks of metal rubbed smoothly against each other, slow and gentle, in a comingling 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 langer, and Mr. Rout's eyes would blaze darker in his long, shallow 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 swinging 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. A head, a stern, 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 up-rose 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 Dukes appear in the stoke-hole doorway. Dukes' 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, trodder-porn, asked, What's up, sir? in awed mutters all around him. Down the stoke-hold ladder, missing as many iron rungs in his hurry, down into a place deep as a well black as Tofett, tipping over back and forth like a seesaw, 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 Duke's neck, and next moment he felt it streaming about his wet ankles. The stoke-hold ventilators hummed. In front of the six fire-doors, two wild-figures stripped to the waist, staggered and stooped, wrestling with heavy shovels. Hello! Plenty of draught now! yelled the second engineer at once, as though he had been all the time looking out for Duke's. The donkey-man, a dapper little chap with a dazzling fair skin and a tiny jingery 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 seawater, and he volleyed a steam 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 eye and eye. Where's the blooming ship? Can you tell me, blast my eyes? Underwater or what? It's coming down here in tonnes! Are the condemned cows 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 settling 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 hurrick and 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 those chests, or perhaps several at once breaking loose in a roll, knocking out others, sides splitting, lids flying open, and all these clumsy Chinaman rising up in a body to save their property. Afterwards every fling of the ship would hurl that trampling 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 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 Dukes wanted to be dismissed from the face of that odious trouble, intruding on the great need of the ship. End of Chapter 4 Recording by Alan Chant in Tumbridge Kent, England, on the 11th of May 2007, www.7exprep.kent.sch.uk Chapter 5 of Typhoon This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Kirsten Ferrari. Typhoon by Joseph Conrad. 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, Bill! They paused in an intelligent immobility, stilled in mid-stroke, a heavy crank arrested on the cant, as if conscious of danger in the passage of time. Then, with a, now then, from the chief, and the sound of 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 Duke's ear began, Take the hands with you. I 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 engine room 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 McQuirr, 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 nanshan 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, bald 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 knotting in an earthquake. An awful racket of iron things falling came from the stoke-hold. 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, shipped 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 claying 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 the 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 decked people will 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 stoke-hold 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. Hello, you wandering officer! Hey, can't you get some of your slush-slingers to wind up a few of their mashes? I'm getting choked with them here. Cursed! Hello! Hey! Remember the articles? Sailors and firemen to assist each other. Hey! Do you 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 among the men in the darkness of the alleyway he felt ready to ring all their necks at the slightest sign of hanging back. The very thought of it exasperated him. He couldn't hang back, and 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, busy 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 boson 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 boson 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 boson 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 Chinaman went over to the roll dark, indistinct, helpless, with a wild gleam of many eyes in light of the lamps. Leave me alone, damn you, I'm all right. Squeech Jukes, drive him forward. Watch your chance when she pitches. Forward with them. Drive him against the bulkhead. Jam him 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 Chinaman were locked in such a compact scrimmage that, linking their arms and aided by an appalling dive of the ship, then 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 boson 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 Chinaman rolling like a boulder. His joints cracked, he said, 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 lifelines 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 would kick at the others who caught it 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 rock 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 with hard fists between the eyes and coward, while those who were hurt submitted to rough handling, blinking rapidly without a plate. 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 Chinamen wild eyed with his tail unplated, nursed a bleeding soul. 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 lifelines. The boson with one leg and one arm embracing a stanchion, struggled with a lamp pressed to his breast, trying to get a light frowning 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 dolerous, slanting eyes followed his movements. With every roll of the ship the long rows of sitting celestials would sway brokenly forward, and her headlong dives knocked together the line of shaven poles 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. The men were in 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 up his head 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 tween-deck's 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 boson shot the bolt and remarked uneasily, seems as if the wind had dropped, sir, as if a brute had tried to be eloquent. Two more started mouthing 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 ordered 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 mud bank. 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 falling 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've done it, sir, he gasped. I thought you would, said Captain McQuir. 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 McQuir 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 tone 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, the captain of the Jukes 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 swamp deck, and the nonshawn 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 McQuir 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 it 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, smashed 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 when this is over," said Jukes, feeling very sore. Let them only recover a bit, and you'll see, they will fly at our throat, sir. Don't forget, she isn't a British ship now. These brutes know it well, too. Damn Siamese flag! We're on board all the same, remarked Captain McQuir. The Troubles not over yet insisted Jukes, prophetically, reeling and catching on. She's a wreck, he added faintly. The Troubles not over yet, ascended Captain McQuir, half-aloud. Look out for her a minute. Are you going off dexer? 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, laboring 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, 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-disk 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 splendor sat like a diadem on a lowering brow. Captain McQuirr 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 McQuirr 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 McQuirr admitted a low whistle. He forgot himself till the flame diminished to a blue spark, burned 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 gained said, as though the wisdom of men were made unerring by the indifference of matter. There was no room for doubt now. Captain McQuirr shot 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 storm had gone through. I wouldn't have believed it, he thought. And his table had been cleared, too. His rulers, his pencils, the ink stand, 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 match-box in its corner of the shelf. There were always matches there by his order. The steward had his instructions impressed him with his sword. 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. Mine 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 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 those little habits that chain us to the weary round of life. He released it at last and letting himself fall on the city 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 weakened 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 were posed on his knees. He bowed his short neck and puffed heavily surrendering to a strange sensation of weariness he was not enlightened for the fatigue of mental stress. From where he sat he could reach the door of a wash stand 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 toweled 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 McQuirre 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 four part of the bridge, began to speak at once. His voice blank and forced 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 bosson's worse than no good, I always said. Thought I would have to go myself and haul one of them up by the neck. Oh, 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 McQuirre 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 on very sudden, said Captain McQuirre. 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 always 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 shoved 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 McQuirre 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 McQuirre. 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're always meeting trouble halfway, Jukes. Captain McQuirre remonstrated quaintly. Though it's a fact that the second maid is no good. Do you hear, Mr. Jukes? You would be left alone if Captain McQuirre 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're 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 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 labored 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 into 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 Mcwhir'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 a pace. In the forefront could be distinguished by the waking plate 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 Mcwhir was trying to do up the top button of his oil-skin coat with unwanted 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 Mcwhir was moved to declare in a tone of excation as it were. I wouldn't like to lose her. He was spared that annoyance. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Typhoon by Joseph Conrad This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org On a bright sunny day with the breeze chasing her smoke far ahead, the Nanshan came to Fuqiao. 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 more broken, torn and devastated aspect. She said about her the worn weary air of ships coming from far ends of the world and indeed with truth for in her short passage she had been very, very far citing, 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 encrusted in grey with salt to the trucks of her mast and to the tops of her funnel. As though, as some facetious seamen 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 tip nose and a face cast in an angry mould landed from a sandpan 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 a quick work. He wore a soiled suit of blue flannel with a pair of dirty cricketing shoes a dingy grey mustache drooped from his lip and daylight could be seen in two places between the rim and the crown of his hat. Hello, what are you doing here? asked the second mate of the Nanshan shaking hands hurriedly standing by for a job chance worth taking got a quiet hint explained the man with a broken hat in jerky apathetic wheezes the second shook his fist at the Nanshan there's a fellow there that ain't fit to have the command of a scow he declared quivering with passion he looked about listlessly is there? but he caught sight on the k of a heavy seamen's chest painted brown under a fringed sail cloth 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 damn Siamese flag nobody to go to or I would make it hot for him the fraud told his chief engineer the fraud for you I 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 struck me is 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'd 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 the chap looking uncommonly like a bummer I saw them walk away together from the cave the hammering and banging of the needful repairs did not disturb captain McQuirre 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. McQuirre in the drawing room of the 40 pound house stifled beyond perhaps out of self respect for she was alone she reclined in a plush bottom and guilt hammock chair near a tiled fireplace with Japanese fans on the mantle and a glow of coals in the grate lifting her hands she glanced weirdly 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 you 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 20 minutes she read perfuncturally 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 McWher 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 damn poor opinion of our chance how do you know as contemptuously the cook an old soldier he hasn't told you maybe well he did give me a hint of that effect the steward brazened it out get along with you you'll be coming to tell me next cheered the old cook over his shoulder Mrs. McWher 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. McWher's mind was set at ease and a black marble clock priced by the local jeweler at three pounds eighteen shillings six pence had a discreet stealthy tick the door flew open and a girl in the long leg short frocked period of existence flung into the room a lot of colorless 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. McWher what have you done with your ribbon the girl put her hands up to her head and pouted he's well continued Mrs. McWher languidly at least I think so he never says she had a little laugh the girls face expressed a wandering indifference and Mrs. McWher surveyed her with a fond pride go and get your hat she said after a while I'm going out to do some shopping on this sale at linems oh how jolly uttered the child impressively in unexpectedly grave vibrating tones and bounded out of the room it was a fine afternoon with gray sky and dry sidewalks outside the drapers Mrs. McWher smiled upon a woman in a black mantle of generous proportions armored in jet and crowned with flowers blooming falsely above a billious 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. McWher 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. McWher drew breath the climate there agrees with him she added beamingly as if poor McWher 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 he'll 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 the black half mittens on her lap the eyes of the engineer's wife fairly danced on the paper that captain of the ship he's in a rather simple man you remember mother? has done something rather clever Solomon says yes my dear said the old woman meekly 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 Saul, father Saul 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 midst of time sometimes it seemed that her daughter-in-law was talking of some strange man Mrs. Rout Jr. was disappointed she turned the page how provoking he doesn't say what it is 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 message money today you could set up a small house out here I would have a chance to see you sometimes then we're not growing younger he's well mother aside Mrs. Rout rousing herself he always was a strong healthy boy said the old woman placidly but Mrs. Duke's 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 lighthearted indomitable resolution jukes had written them in good faith for he felt thus when he wrote he described with lurid effects the scenes of the tween deck it struck me in a flash that those confounded Chinamen couldn't tell we weren't a desperate kind of robbers it isn't good to part the Chinamen from his money if he's the stronger party we need to 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 said his heart on we cleared out without staying to inquire how they felt I'm 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 it was when the weather quieted down that the situation became confoundedly delicate it wasn't made any better up by us having been lately transferred to the Saimi's flag though the skipper can't see that it makes any difference as long as we're 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 bed post understand but apart from this it is an infernally lonely state for a ship to be going about the China seas with no proper consoles 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 Johnny's under hatches for another 15 hours or so as we weren't much farther than that from Fan Chao we would find there most likely some sort of man of war and once under her guns if 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 Tauté or whatever they call these chaps and goggles you see being carried about in sedan chairs through their stinking streets the old man wouldn't see it somehow 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 concerns as he looking at me very hard it made me angry hot of course you couldn't keep a thing like that quiet but the chest had been secured in the usual manner and we're safe enough for any earthly gale there's 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 30 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 Chinaman is no child's play I was damn 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 for a bit I hadn't been asleep in my bunk ten minutes when in rushes the steward 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 senses out of me I didn't know what had happened could hear no wind the captain's letting them out oh he's letting them out jump on deck sir and save us the chief engineer just run below for his revolvers that's why 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 boson were took a bath I passed up to them some of the rifles all the ships on the coast of China carry in the cabin and led them on the bridge on the way I ran against old Saul 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 Hinn's dandy cleric 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 asked 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 damn this ship isn't worse than Bedlam look sharp now I want you up here to help me and Bun Hinn's Chinaman to count that money you and mine letting 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 Chinaman know their officials better than we do the hatchets 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 deuce tough there was a fellow amongst others of the badly hurt who had his eye all but knocked out it stood out of his head like 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 after he had done his thinking he made that Bunhin's fellow go down and explain to them the only way they could get their money back he told me afterwards that all the koolies 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 the others 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 officially could scare up in Fuqiao 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 shipwreck to look at these Chinaman staggering up on the bridge one by one for their share and the old man still booted it and in his shirt sleeves busy paying out at the chart room door perspiring like anything and now and then coming down sharp on myself or father out about one thing or another not quite to his mind he took the share of those who were disabled himself and let them on the number two hatch there were three dollars left over and these went to the three most damaged Cooley's one to each we turned to afterwards and shoveled 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 nears can be to keeping the thing quiet for the benefit of all concerned what's your opinion you pampered mail boats well the old chief says 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 he got out of it very well for such a stupid man end of chapter six end of typhoon by Joseph Conrad