every moment, and the ship lurched heavily in the smooth, deep hollows
of the sea.

"I wonder where that beastly swell comes from," said Jukes aloud,
recovering himself after a stagger.

"North-east," grunted the literal MacWhirr, from his side of the bridge.
"There's some dirty weather knocking about. Go and look at the glass."

When Jukes came out of the chart-room, the cast of his countenance had
changed to thoughtfulness and concern. He caught hold of the bridge-rail
and stared ahead.

The temperature in the engine-room had gone up to a hundred and
seventeen degrees. Irritated voices were ascending through the skylight
and through the fiddle of the stokehold in a harsh and resonant uproar,
mingled with angry clangs and scrapes of metal, as if men with limbs of
iron and throats of bronze had been quarrelling down there. The second
engineer was falling foul of the stokers for letting the steam go down.
He was a man with arms like a blacksmith, and generally feared; but that
afternoon the stokers were answering him back recklessly, and slammed
the furnace doors with the fury of despair. Then the noise ceased
suddenly, and the second engineer appeared, emerging out of the
stokehold streaked with grime and soaking wet like a chimney-sweep
coming out of a well. As soon as his head was clear of the fiddle he
began to scold Jukes for not trimming properly the stokehold
ventilators; and in answer Jukes made with his hands deprecatory
soothing signs meaning: "No wind--can't be helped--you can see for
yourself." But the other wouldn't hear reason. His teeth flashed angrily
in his dirty face. He didn't mind, he said, the trouble of punching