The Nan-Shan was ploughing a vanishing furrow upon the circle of the sea that had the surface and the shimmer of an undulating piece of gray silk.  The sun, pale and without rays, poured down leaden heat in a strangely indecisive light, and the Chinamen were lying prostrate about the decks.  Their bloodless, pinched, yellow faces were like the faces of bilious invalids.  Captain MacWhirr noticed two of them especially, stretched out on their backs below the bridge.  As soon as they had closed their eyes they seemed dead.  Three others, however, were quarrelling barbarously away forward; and one big fellow, half naked, with herculean shoulders, was hanging limply over a winch; another, sitting on the deck, his knees up and his head drooping sideways in a girlish attitude, was plaiting his pigtail with infinite languor depicted in his whole person and in the very movement of his fingers.  The smoke struggled with difficulty out of the funnel, and instead of streaming away spread itself out like an infernal sort of cloud, smelling of sulphur and raining soot all over the decks.

“What the devil are you doing there, Mr. Jukes?” asked Captain MacWhirr.

This unusual form of address, though mumbled rather than spoken, caused the body of Mr. Jukes to start as though it had been prodded under the fifth rib.  He had had a low bench brought on the bridge, and sitting on it, with a length of rope curled about his feet and a piece of canvas stretched over his knees, was pushing a sail-needle vigorously.  He looked up, and his surprise gave to his eyes an expression of innocence and candour.

“I am only roping some of that new set of bags we made last trip for whipping up coals,” he remonstrated, gently.  “We shall want them for the next coaling, sir.”

“What became of the others?”

“Why, worn out of course, sir.”

Captain MacWhirr, after glaring down irresolutely at his chief mate, disclosed the gloomy and cynical conviction that more than half of them had been lost overboard, “if only the truth was known,” and retired to the other end of the bridge.  Jukes, exasperated by this unprovoked attack, broke the needle at the second stitch, and dropping his work got up and cursed the heat in a violent undertone.

The propeller thumped, the three Chinamen forward had given up squabbling very suddenly, and the one who had been plaiting his tail clasped his legs and stared dejectedly over his knees.  The lurid sunshine cast faint and sickly shadows.  The swell ran higher and swifter every moment, and the ship lurched heavily in the smooth, deep hollows of the sea.

“I wonder where that beastly swell comes from,” said Jukes aloud, recovering himself after a stagger.

“North-east,” grunted the literal MacWhirr, from his side of the bridge.  “There’s some dirty weather knocking about.  Go and look at the glass.”

When Jukes came out of the chart-room, the cast of his countenance had changed to thoughtfulness and concern.  He caught hold of the bridge-rail and stared ahead.