dled, and
a ferocity in the blows that fell. She was like a living creature thrown
to the rage of a mob: hustled terribly, struck at, borne up, flung
down, leaped upon. Captain MacWhirr and Jukes kept hold of each other,
deafened by the noise, gagged by the wind; and the great physical
tumult beating about their bodies, brought, like an unbridled display
of passion, a profound trouble to their souls. One of those wild and
appalling shrieks that are heard at times passing mysteriously overhead
in the steady roar of a hurricane, swooped, as if borne on wings, upon
the ship, and Jukes tried to outscream it.

"Will she live through this?"

The cry was wrenched out of his breast. It was as unintentional as the
birth of a thought in the head, and he heard nothing of it himself. It
all became extinct at once--thought, intention, effort--and of his cry
the inaudible vibration added to the tempest waves of the air.

He expected nothing from it. Nothing at all. For indeed what answer
could be made? But after a while he heard with amazement the frail and
resisting voice in his ear, the dwarf sound, unconquered in the giant
tumult.

"She may!"

It was a dull yell, more difficult to seize than a whisper. And
presently the voice returned again, half submerged in the vast crashes,
like a ship battling against the waves of an ocean.

"Let's hope so!" it cried--small, lonely and unmoved, a stranger to
the visions of hope or fear; and it flickered into disconnected words:
"Ship. . . . . This. . . . Never--Anyhow . . . for the best." Jukes gave
it up.

Then, as if it had come suddenly upon the one thing fit to withstand
the power of a storm, it seemed to gain force and firmness for the last
broken shouts:

"Keep on hammering . . . builders . . . good men. . . . . And chance it
. . . engines. . . . Rout . . . good man."

Captain MacWhirr removed his arm from Jukes' shoulders, and thereby
ceased to exist for his mate, so dark it was; Jukes, after a tense
stiffening of every muscle, would let himself go limp all over. The
gnawing of profound discomfort existed side by side with an incredible
disposition to somnolence, as though he had been buffeted and worried
into drowsiness. The wind would get hold of his head and try to shake
it off his shoulders; his clothes, full of water, were as heavy as lead,
cold and dripping like an armour of melting ice: he shivered--it lasted
a long time; and with his hands closed hard on his hold, he