“Why, I only want to get you that blamed light you are crying for,” he expostulated, almost pitifully.

Somebody told him to go and put his head in a bag.  He regretted he could not recognize the voice, and that it was too dark to see, otherwise, as he said, he would have put a head on that son 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 coal-trimmer’s slice probably—­left down there by somebody.  This 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 coal-dust 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 active 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.  Something 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.