“Now then, Beale!” cried Mr. Rout.

The steam hissed low.  The piston-rods slid in and out.  Jukes put his ear to the tube.  The voice was ready for him.  It said:  “Pick up all the money.  Bear a hand now.  I’ll want you up here.”  And that was all.

“Sir?” called up Jukes.  There was no answer.

He staggered away like a defeated man from the field of battle.  He had got, in some way or other, a cut above his left eyebrow—­a cut to the bone.  He was not aware of it in the least:  quantities of the China Sea, large enough to break his neck for him, had gone over his head, had cleaned, washed, and salted that wound.  It did not bleed, but only gaped red; and this gash over the eye, his dishevelled hair, the disorder of his clothes, gave him the aspect of a man worsted in a fight with fists.

“Got to pick up the dollars.”  He appealed to Mr. Rout, smiling pitifully at random.

“What’s that?” asked Mr. Rout, wildly.  “Pick up . . . ?  I don’t care. . . .”  Then, quivering in every muscle, but with an exaggeration of paternal tone, “Go away now, for God’s sake.  You deck people’ll drive me silly.  There’s that second mate been going for the old man.  Don’t you know?  You fellows are going wrong for want of something to do. . . .”

At these words Jukes discovered in himself the beginnings of anger.  Want of something to do—­indeed. . . .  Full of hot scorn against the chief, he turned to go the way he had come.  In the stokehold the plump donkeyman toiled with his shovel mutely, as if his tongue had been cut out; but the second was carrying on like a noisy, undaunted maniac, who had preserved his skill in the art of stoking under a marine boiler.

“Hallo, you wandering officer!  Hey!  Can’t you get some of your slush-slingers to wind up a few of them ashes?  I am getting choked with them here.  Curse it!  Hallo!  Hey!  Remember the articles:  Sailors and firemen to assist each other.  Hey!  D’ye hear?”

Jukes was climbing out frantically, and the other, lifting up his face after him, howled, “Can’t you speak?  What are you poking about here for?  What’s your game, anyhow?”

A frenzy possessed Jukes.  By the time he was back amongst the men in the darkness of the alleyway, he felt ready to wring all their necks at the slightest sign of hanging back.  The very thought of it exasperated him.  He couldn’t hang back.  They shouldn’t.

The impetuosity with which he came amongst them carried them along.  They had already been excited and startled at all his comings and goings—­by the fierceness and rapidity of his movements; and more felt than seen in his rushes, he appeared formidable—­busied with matters of life and death that brooked no delay.  At his first word he heard them drop into the bunker one after another obediently, with heavy thumps.