It was a dull yell, more difficult to seize than a whisper. And
presently the voice returned again, half submerged in the vast crashes,
like a ship battling against the waves of an ocean.

"Let's hope so!" it cried--small, lonely and unmoved, a stranger to
the visions of hope or fear; and it flickered into disconnected words:
"Ship. . . . . This. . . . Never--Anyhow . . . for the best." Jukes gave
it up.

Then, as if it had come suddenly upon the one thing fit to withstand
the power of a storm, it seemed to gain force and firmness for the last
broken shouts:

"Keep on hammering . . . builders . . . good men. . . . . And chance it
. . . engines. . . . Rout . . . good man."

Captain MacWhirr removed his arm from Jukes' shoulders, and thereby
ceased to exist for his mate, so dark it was; Jukes, after a tense
stiffening of every muscle, would let himself go limp all over. The
gnawing of profound discomfort existed side by side with an incredible
disposition to somnolence, as though he had been buffeted and worried
into drowsiness. The wind would get hold of his head and try to shake
it off his shoulders; his clothes, full of water, were as heavy as lead,
cold and dripping like an armour of melting ice: he shivered--it lasted
a long time; and with his hands closed hard on his hold, he was letting
himself sink slowly into the depths of bodily misery. His mind became
concentrated upon himself in an aimless, idle way, and when something
pushed lightly at the back of his knees he nearly, as the saying is,
jumped out of his skin.