‘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 contemptous 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.

At its setting the sun had a diminished diameter and an expiring brown, rayless glow, as if millions of centuries elapsing since the morning had brought it near its end. A dense bank of cloud became visible to the northward; it had a sinister dark olive tint, and lay low and motionless upon the sea, resembling a solid obstacle in the path of the ship. She went floundering towards it like an exhausted creature driven to its death. The coppery twilight retired slowly, and the darkness brought out overhead a swarm of unsteady, big stars, that, as if blown upon, flickered exceedingly and seemed to hang very near the earth. At eight o’clock Jukes went into the chart-room to write up the ship’s log.

He copied neatly out of the rough-book the number of miles, the course of the ship, and in the column for ‘wind’ scrawled the word ‘calm’ from top to bottom of the eight hours since noon. He was exasperated by the continuous, monotonous rolling of the ship. The heavy inkstand would slide away in a manner that suggested perverse intelligence in dodging the pen. Having written in the large space under the head of ‘Remarks’ ‘Heat very oppressive’, he stuck the end of the penholder in his teeth, pipe fashion, and mopped his face carefully.

‘Ship rolling heavily in a high cross swell,’ he began again, and commented to himself, ‘Heavily is no word for it.’ Then he wrote: ‘Sunset threatening, with a low bank of clouds to N. and E. Sky clear overhead.’

Sprawling over the table with arrested pen, he glanced out of the door, and in that frame of his vision he saw all the stars flying upwards between the teakwood jambs on a black sky. The whole lot took flight together and disappeared, leaving only a blackness flecked with white flashes, for the sea was as black as the sky and speckled with foam afar. The stars that had flown to the roll came back on the return swing of the ship, rushing downwards in their glittering multitude, not of fiery points, but enlarged to tiny discs brilliant with a clear wet sheen.

Jukes watched the flying big stars for a moment, and then wrote: ‘8 p.m. Swell increasing. Ship labouring and taking water on her decks. Battened down the coolies for the night. Barometer still falling.’ He paused, and thought to himself, ‘Perhaps nothing whatever’ll come of it.’ And then he closed resolutely his entries: ‘Every appearance of a typhoon coming on.’

On going out he had to stand aside, and Captain MacWhirr strode over the doorstep without saying a word or making a sign.

‘Shut the door, Mr Jukes, will you?’ he cried from within.

Jukes turned back to do so, muttering ironically: ‘Afraid to catch cold, I suppose.’ It was his watch below, but he yearned for communion with his kind; and he remarked cheerily to the second mate: ‘Doesn’t look so bad, after all—does it?’