He was an ill-favoured, undersized, gruff sailor of fifty, coarsely hairy, short-legged, long-armed, resembling an elderly ape.  His strength was immense; and in his great lumpy paws, bulging like brown boxing-gloves on the end of furry forearms, the heaviest objects were handled like playthings.  Apart from the grizzled pelt on his chest, the menacing demeanour and the hoarse voice, he had none of the classical attributes of his rating.  His good nature almost amounted to imbecility:  the men did what they liked with him, and he had not an ounce of initiative in his character, which was easy-going and talkative.  For these reasons Jukes disliked him; but Captain MacWhirr, to Jukes’ scornful disgust, seemed to regard him as a first-rate petty officer.

He pulled himself up by Jukes’ coat, taking that liberty with the greatest moderation, and only so far as it was forced upon him by the hurricane.

“What is it, boss’n, what is it?” yelled Jukes, impatiently.  What could that fraud of a boss’n want on the bridge?  The typhoon had got on Jukes’ nerves.  The husky bellowings of the other, though unintelligible, seemed to suggest a state of lively satisfaction.

There could be no mistake.  The old fool was pleased with something.

The boatswain’s other hand had found some other body, for in a changed tone he began to inquire:  “Is it you, sir?  Is it you, sir?” The wind strangled his howls.

“Yes!” cried Captain MacWhirr.

IV

All that the boatswain, out of a superabundance of yells, could make clear to Captain MacWhirr was the bizarre intelligence that “All them Chinamen in the fore ’tween deck have fetched away, sir.”

Jukes to leeward could hear these two shouting within six inches of his face, as you may hear on a still night half a mile away two men conversing across a field.  He heard Captain MacWhirr’s exasperated “What?  What?” and the strained pitch of the other’s hoarseness.  “In a lump . . . seen them myself. . . .  Awful sight, sir . . . thought . . . tell you.”

Jukes remained indifferent, as if rendered irresponsible by the force of the hurricane, which made the very thought of action utterly vain.  Besides, being very young, he had found the occupation of keeping his heart completely steeled against the worst so engrossing that he had come to feel an overpowering dislike towards any other form of activity whatever.  He was not scared; he knew this because, firmly believing he would never see another sunrise, he remained calm in that belief.

These are the moments of do-nothing heroics to which even good men surrender at times.  Many officers of ships can no doubt recall a case in their experience when just such a trance of confounded stoicism would come all at once over a whole ship’s company.  Jukes, however, had no wide experience of men or storms.  He conceived himself to be calm—­inexorably calm; but as a matter of fact he was daunted; not abjectly, but only so far as a decent man may, without becoming loathsome to himself.