their blanked heads down there, blank his soul, but did the condemned
sailors think you could keep steam up in the God-forsaken boilers simply
by knocking the blanked stokers about? No, by George! You had to get
some draught, too--may he be everlastingly blanked for a swab-headed
deck-hand if you didn't! And the chief, too, rampaging before the
steam-gauge and carrying on like a lunatic up and down the engine-room
ever since noon. What did Jukes think he was stuck up there for, if he
couldn't get one of his decayed, good-for-nothing deck-cripples to turn
the ventilators to the wind?

The relations of the "engine-room" and the "deck" of the Nan-Shan were,
as is known, of a brotherly nature; therefore Jukes leaned over and
begged the other in a restrained tone not to make a disgusting ass of
himself; the skipper was on the other side of the bridge. But the second
declared mutinously that he didn't care a rap who was on the other side
of the bridge, and Jukes, passing in a flash from lofty disapproval into
a state of exaltation, invited him in unflattering terms to come up and
twist the beastly things to please himself, and catch such wind as a
donkey of his sort could find. The second rushed up to the fray. He
flung himself at the port ventilator as though he meant to tear it out
bodily and toss it overboard. All he did was to move the cowl round a
few inches, with an enormous expenditure of force, and seemed spent
in the effort. He leaned against the back of the wheelhouse, and Jukes
walked up to him.

"Oh, Heavens!" ejaculated the engineer in a feeble voice. He lifted
his eyes to the sky, and then let his glassy stare descend to meet the
horizon that, tilting up to an angle of forty degrees, seemed to hang on
a slant for a while and settled down slowly. "Heavens! Phew! What's up,
anyhow?"