top. His eyes looked at it, narrowed with attention, as if expecting
an imperceptible sign. With his grave face he resembled a booted and
misshapen pagan burning incense before the oracle of a Joss. There was
no mistake. It was the lowest reading he had ever seen in his life.

Captain MacWhirr emitted a low whistle. He forgot himself till the flame
diminished to a blue spark, burnt his fingers and vanished. Perhaps
something had gone wrong with the thing!

There was an aneroid glass screwed above the couch. He turned that
way, struck another match, and discovered the white face of the other
instrument looking at him from the bulkhead, meaningly, not to be
gainsaid, as though the wisdom of men were made unerring by the
indifference of matter. There was no room for doubt now. Captain
MacWhirr pshawed at it, and threw the match down.

The worst was to come, then--and if the books were right this worst
would be very bad. The experience of the last six hours had enlarged his
conception of what heavy weather could be like. "It'll be terrific," he
pronounced, mentally. He had not consciously looked at anything by the
light of the matches except at the barometer; and yet somehow he had
seen that his water-bottle and the two tumblers had been flung out of
their stand. It seemed to give him a more intimate knowledge of the
tossing the ship had gone through. "I wouldn't have believed it," he
thought. And his table had been cleared, too; his rulers, his pencils,
the inkstand--all the things that had their safe appointed places--they
were gone, as if a mischievous hand had plucked them out one by one
and flung them on the wet floor. The hurricane had broken in upon the
orderly arrangements of his privacy. This had never happened before, and
the feeling of dismay reached the very seat of his composure. And the