and talkative. The fury of the New South
Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim,
faintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could
get below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a
gun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic
adventure; they weren't bad chaps though. Even the skipper himself . . .
His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued
gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was
too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. The
quality of these men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but
they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was
different. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . . The life
was easy and he was too sure of himself--too sure of himself to . . .
The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet
was thinner than a thread in a spider's web.

The second engineer was coming by easy transitions to the consideration
of his finances and of his courage.

'Who's drunk? I? No, no, captain! That won't do. You ought to know by
this time the chief ain't free-hearted enough to make a sparrow drunk,
b'gosh. I've never been the worse for liquor in my life; the stuff ain't
made yet that would make _me_ drunk. I could drink liquid fire against
your whisky peg for peg, b'gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber. If I
thought I was drunk I would jump overboard--do away with myself, b'gosh.
I would! Straight! And I won't go off the bridge. Where do you expect
me to take the air on a night like this, eh? On deck amongst that vermin
down there? Likely--ain't it! And I am not afraid of anything you can
do.'

The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a little
without a word.

'I don't know what fear is,' pursued the engineer, with the enthusiasm
of sincere conviction. 'I am not afraid of doing all the bloomin' work
in this rotten hooker, b'gosh! And a jolly good thing for you that there
are some of us about the world that aren't afraid of their lives, or
where would you be--you and this old thing here with her plates like
brown paper--brown paper, s'elp me? It's all very fine for you--you
get a power of pieces out of her one way and another; but what about
me--what do I get? A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and
find yourself. I wish to ask you respectfully--respectfully, mind--who