s
sank, darkening the engine-room. One went out. With a tearing crash and
a swirling, raving tumult, tons of water fell upon the deck, as though
the ship had darted under the foot of a cataract.

Down there they looked at each other, stunned.

"Swept from end to end, by God!" bawled Jukes.

She dipped into the hollow straight down, as if going over the edge of
the world. The engine-room toppled forward menacingly, like the inside
of a tower nodding in an earthquake. An awful racket, of iron things
falling, came from the stokehold. She hung on this appalling slant long
enough for Beale to drop on his hands and knees and begin to crawl as if
he meant to fly on all fours out of the engine-room, and for Mr. Rout
to turn his head slowly, rigid, cavernous, with the lower jaw dropping.
Jukes had shut his eyes, and his face in a moment became hopelessly
blank and gentle, like the face of a blind man.

At last she rose slowly, staggering, as if she had to lift a mountain
with her bows.

Mr. Rout shut his mouth; Jukes blinked; and little Beale stood up
hastily.

"Another one like this, and that's the last of her," cried the chief.

He and Jukes looked at each other, and the same thought came into their
heads. The Captain! Everything must have been swept away. Steering-gear
gone--ship like a log. All over directly.

"Rush!" ejaculated Mr. Rout thickly, glaring with enlarged, doubtful
eyes at Jukes, who answered him by an irresolute glance.

The clang of the telegraph gong soothed them instantly. The black hand
dropped in a flash from STOP to FULL.

"Now then, Beale!" cried Mr. Rout.

The steam hissed low. The piston-rods slid in and out. Jukes put his
ear to the tube. The voice was ready for him. It said: "Pick up all the
money. Bear a hand now. I'll want you up here." And that was all.

"Sir?" called up Jukes. There was no answer.

He staggered away like a defeated man from the field of battle. He had
got, in some way or other, a cut above his left eyebrow--a cut to the
bone. He was not aware of it in the least: quantities of the China Sea,
large enough to break his neck for him, had gone over his head, had
cleaned, washed, and salted that wound. It did not bleed, but only gaped
red; and this gash over the eye, his dishevelled hair, the disorder of
his clothes, gave him the aspect of a man worsted in a fight with fists.

"Got to pick up the dollars." He appealed to Mr. Rout, smiling pitifully
at random.

"What'