‘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 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 MacWhirr. ‘Mr Jukes.’

‘Here, sir.’

The two men were growing indistinct to each other.

‘We must trust her to go through it and come out on the other side. That’s plain and straight. There’s no room for Captain Wilson’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 are always meeting trouble half-way, Jukes,’ Captain MacWhirr remonstrated quaintly. ‘Though it’s a fact that the second mate is no good. D’ye hear, Mr Jukes? You would be left alone if …’

Captain MacWhirr interrupted himself, and Jukes, glancing on all sides, remained silent.