The Nan-Shan was being looted by the storm with a senseless, destructive fury:  trysails torn out of the extra gaskets, double-lashed awnings blown away, bridge swept clean, weather-cloths burst, rails twisted, light-screens smashed—­and two of the boats had gone already.  They had gone unheard and unseen, melting, as it were, in the shock and smother of the wave.  It was only later, when upon the white flash of another high sea hurling itself amidships, Jukes had a vision of two pairs of davits leaping black and empty out of the solid blackness, with one overhauled fall flying and an iron-bound block capering in the air, that he became aware of what had happened within about three yards of his back.

He poked his head forward, groping for the ear of his commander.  His lips touched it—­big, fleshy, very wet.  He cried in an agitated tone, “Our boats are going now, sir.”

And again he heard that voice, forced and ringing feebly, but with a penetrating effect of quietness in the enormous discord of noises, as if sent out from some remote spot of peace beyond the black wastes of the gale; again he heard a man’s voice—­the frail and indomitable sound that can be made to carry an infinity of thought, resolution and purpose, that shall be pronouncing confident words on the last day, when heavens fall, and justice is done—­again he heard it, and it was crying to him, as if from very, very far—­“All right.”

He thought he had not managed to make himself understood.  “Our boats—­I say boats—­the boats, sir!  Two gone!”

The same voice, within a foot of him and yet so remote, yelled sensibly, “Can’t be helped.”

Captain MacWhirr had never turned his face, but Jukes caught some more words on the wind.

“What can—­expect—­when hammering through—­such—­Bound to leave—­something behind—­stands to reason.”

Watchfully Jukes listened for more.  No more came.  This was all Captain MacWhirr had to say; and Jukes could picture to himself rather than see the broad squat back before him.  An impenetrable obscurity pressed down upon the ghostly glimmers of the sea.  A dull conviction seized upon Jukes that there was nothing to be done.

If the steering-gear did not give way, if the immense volumes of water did not burst the deck in or smash one of the hatches, if the engines did not give up, if way could be kept on the ship against this terrific wind, and she did not bury herself in one of these awful seas, of whose white crests alone, topping high above her bows, he could now and then get a sickening glimpse—­then there was a chance of her coming out of it.  Something within him seemed to turn over, bringing uppermost the feeling that the Nan-Shan was lost.

“She’s done for,” he said to himself, with a surprising mental agitation, as though he had discovered an unexpected meaning in this thought.  One of these things was bound to happen.  Nothing could be prevented now, and nothing could be remedied.  The men on board did not count, and the ship could not last.  This weather was too impossible.