disturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information
under the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he had
no experience of cataclysms, and belief does not necessarily imply
comprehension. The wisdom of his county had pronounced by means of an
Act of Parliament that before he could be considered as fit to take
charge of a ship he should be able to answer certain simple questions on
the subject of circular storms such as hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons;
and apparently he had answered them, since he was now in command of the
Nan-Shan in the China seas during the season of typhoons. But if he
had answered he remembered nothing of it. He was, however, conscious of
being made uncomfortable by the clammy heat. He came out on the bridge,
and found no relief to this oppression. The air seemed thick. He gasped
like a fish, and began to believe himself greatly out of sorts.

The Nan-Shan was ploughing a vanishing furrow upon the circle of the
sea that had the surface and the shimmer of an undulating piece of
gray silk. The sun, pale and without rays, poured down leaden heat in a
strangely indecisive light, and the Chinamen were lying prostrate about
the decks. Their bloodless, pinched, yellow faces were like the faces
of bilious invalids. Captain MacWhirr noticed two of them especially,
stretched out on their backs below the bridge. As soon as they had
closed their eyes they seemed dead. Three others, however, were
quarrelling barbarously away forward; and one big fellow, half naked,
with herculean shoulders, was hanging limply over a winch; another,
sitting on the deck, his knees up and his head drooping sideways in
a girlish attitude, was plaiting his pigtail with infinite languor
depicted in his whole person and in the very movement of his fingers.
The smoke struggled with difficulty out of the funnel, and instead
of streaming away spread itself out like an infernal sort of cloud,
smelling of sulphur and raining soot all over the decks.