Captain MacWhirr looked up. "D'ye mean to say, Mr. Jukes, you ever had
your head tied up in a blanket? What was that for?"

"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 contemptuous 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 copies 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 h