after their scattered dollars they were by that time fighting only
for their footing. They took each other by the throat merely to save
themselves from being hurled about. Whoever got a hold anywhere would
kick at the others who caught at his legs and hung on, till a roll sent
them flying together across the deck.

The coming of the white devils was a terror. Had they come to kill? The
individuals torn out of the ruck became very limp in the seamen's hands:
some, dragged aside by the heels, were passive, like dead bodies, with
open, fixed eyes. Here and there a coolie would fall on his knees as if
begging for mercy; several, whom the excess of fear made unruly, were
hit with hard fists between the eyes, and cowered; while those who were
hurt submitted to rough handling, blinking rapidly without a plaint.
Faces streamed with blood; there were raw places on the shaven heads,
scratches, bruises, torn wounds, gashes. The broken porcelain out of the
chests was mostly responsible for the latter. Here and there a Chinaman,
wild-eyed, with his tail unplaited, nursed a bleeding sole.

They had been ranged closely, after having been shaken into submission,
cuffed a little to allay excitement, addressed in gruff words of
encouragement that sounded like promises of evil. They sat on the deck
in ghastly, drooping rows, and at the end the carpenter, with two hands
to help him, moved busily from place to place, setting taut and hitching
the life-lines. The boatswain, with one leg and one arm embracing a
stanchion, struggled with a lamp pressed to his breast, trying to get
a light, and growling all the time like an industrious gorilla. The
figures of seamen stooped repeatedly, with the movements of gleaners,
and everything was being flung into the bunker: clothing, smashed wood,
broken china, and the dollars, too, gathered up in men's jackets. Now
and then a sailor would stagger towards the doorway with his arms full