"Are you going off the deck, sir?" asked Jukes, hurriedly, as if the
storm were sure to pounce upon him as soon as he had been left alone
with the ship.

He watched her, battered and solitary, labouring heavily in a wild scene
of mountainous black waters lit by the gleams of distant worlds. She
moved slowly, breathing into the still core of the hurricane the excess
of her strength in a white cloud of steam--and the deep-toned vibration
of the escape was like the defiant trumpeting of a living creature of
the sea impatient for the renewal of the contest. It ceased suddenly.
The still air moaned. Above Jukes' head a few stars shone into a pit
of black vapours. The inky edge of the cloud-disc frowned upon the ship
under the patch of glittering sky. The stars, too, seemed to look at her
intently, as if for the last time, and the cluster of their splendour
sat like a diadem on a lowering brow.

Captain MacWhirr had gone into the chart-room. There was no light there;
but he could feel the disorder of that place where he used to live
tidily. His armchair was upset. The books had tumbled out on the floor:
he scrunched a piece of glass under his boot. He groped for the matches,
and found a box on a shelf with a deep ledge. He struck one, and
puckering the corners of his eyes, held out the little flame towards
the barometer whose glittering top of glass and metals nodded at him
continuously.

It stood very low--incredibly low, so low that Captain MacWhirr grunted.
The match went out, and hurriedly he extracted another, with thick,
stiff fingers.

Again a little flame flared up before the nodding glass and metal of the