get rid of him the first chance."

"It's the heat," said Jukes. "The weather's awful. It would make a saint
swear. Even up here I feel exactly as if I had my head tied up in a
woollen blanket."

Captain MacWhirr looked up. "D'ye mean to say, Mr. Jukes, you ever had
your head tied up in a blanket? What was that for?"

"It's a manner of speaking, sir," said Jukes, stolidly.

"Some of you fellows do go on! What's that about saints swearing? I wish
you wouldn't talk so wild. What sort of saint would that be that would
swear? No more saint than yourself, I expect. And what's a blanket got
to do with it--or the weather either. . . . The heat does not make me
swear--does it? It's filthy bad temper. That's what it is. And what's
the good of your talking like this?"

Thus Captain MacWhirr expostulated against the use of images in speech,
and at the end electrified Jukes by a contemptuous snort, followed by
words of passion and resentment: "Damme! I'll fire him out of the ship
if he don't look out."

And Jukes, incorrigible, thought: "Goodness me! Somebody's put a new
inside to my old man. Here's temper, if you like. Of course it's the
weather; what else? It would make an angel quarrelsome--let alone a
saint."

All the Chinamen on deck appeared at their last gasp.