“Oh! aye!  All right. . . .”  The Captain lifted his eyes for the first time to the man, “. . .  Hackett.”

And he seemed to dismiss this matter from his mind.  He stooped to the engine-room speaking-tube, blew in, and bent his head.  Mr. Rout below answered, and at once Captain MacWhirr put his lips to the mouthpiece.

With the uproar of the gale around him he applied alternately his lips and his ear, and the engineer’s voice mounted to him, harsh and as if out of the heat of an engagement.  One of the stokers was disabled, the others had given in, the second engineer and the donkey-man were firing-up.  The third engineer was standing by the steam-valve.  The engines were being tended by hand.  How was it above?

“Bad enough.  It mostly rests with you,” said Captain MacWhirr.  Was the mate down there yet?  No?  Well, he would be presently.  Would Mr. Rout let him talk through the speaking-tube?—­through the deck speaking-tube, because he—­the Captain—­was going out again on the bridge directly.  There was some trouble amongst the Chinamen.  They were fighting, it seemed.  Couldn’t allow fighting anyhow. . . .

Mr. Rout had gone away, and Captain MacWhirr could feel against his ear the pulsation of the engines, like the beat of the ship’s heart.  Mr. Rout’s voice down there shouted something distantly.  The ship pitched headlong, the pulsation leaped with a hissing tumult, and stopped dead.  Captain MacWhirr’s face was impassive, and his eyes were fixed aimlessly on the crouching shape of the second mate.  Again Mr. Rout’s voice cried out in the depths, and the pulsating beats recommenced, with slow strokes—­growing swifter.

Mr. Rout had returned to the tube.  “It don’t matter much what they do,” he said, hastily; and then, with irritation, “She takes these dives as if she never meant to come up again.”

“Awful sea,” said the Captain’s voice from above.

“Don’t let me drive her under,” barked Solomon Rout up the pipe.

“Dark and rain.  Can’t see what’s coming,” uttered the voice.  “Must—­keep—­her—­moving—­enough to steer—­and chance it,” it went on to state distinctly.

“I am doing as much as I dare.”

“We are—­getting—­smashed up—­a good deal up here,” proceeded the voice mildly.  “Doing—­fairly well—­though.  Of course, if the wheelhouse should go. . . .”

Mr. Rout, bending an attentive ear, muttered peevishly something under his breath.

But the deliberate voice up there became animated to ask:  “Jukes turned up yet?” Then, after a short wait, “I wish he would bear a hand.  I want him to be done and come up here in case of anything.  To look after the ship.  I am all alone.  The second mate’s lost. . . .”

“What?” shouted Mr. Rout into the engine-room, taking his head away.  Then up the tube he cried, “Gone overboard?” and clapped his ear to.

“Lost his nerve,” the voice from above continued in a matter-of-fact tone.  “Damned awkward circumstance.”