And directly, his heart, corrupted by the storm that breeds a craving for peace, rebelled against the tyranny of training and command.

Captain MacWhirr had his mate’s head fixed firm in the crook of his elbow, and pressed it to his yelling lips mysteriously.  Sometimes Jukes would break in, admonishing hastily:  “Look out, sir!” or Captain MacWhirr 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 MacWhirr would resume, his shouts. “. . . .  Says . . . whole lot . . . fetched away. . . .  Ought to see . . . 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 all together in the dark, and tons of water could be heard scuttling about as if trying to get at them from above.  The boatswain 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 boatswain turned on him.

This called up a shout of execration.  The boatswain 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 forward—­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 contumely.  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 athwartship coal-bunker, which, being at times used as cargo space, communicated by an iron door with the fore ’tween-deck.  It was empty then, and its manhole was the foremost one in the alleyway.  The boatswain 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.