Mrs. Rout junior was disappointed.  “H’m.  H’m.”  She turned the page.  “How provoking!  He doesn’t say what it is.  Says I couldn’t understand how much there was in it.  Fancy!  What could it be so very clever?  What a wretched man not to tell us!”

She read on without further remark soberly, and at last sat looking into the fire.  The chief wrote just a word or two of the typhoon; but something had moved him to express an increased longing for the companionship of the jolly woman.  “If it hadn’t been that mother must be looked after, I would send you your passage-money to-day.  You could set up a small house out here.  I would have a chance to see you sometimes then.  We are not growing younger. . . .”

“He’s well, mother,” sighed Mrs. Rout, rousing herself.

“He always was a strong healthy boy,” said the old woman, placidly.

But Mr. Jukes’ account was really animated and very full.  His friend in the Western Ocean trade imparted it freely to the other officers of his liner.  “A chap I know writes to me about an extraordinary affair that happened on board his ship in that typhoon—­you know—­that we read of in the papers two months ago.  It’s the funniest thing!  Just see for yourself what he says.  I’ll show you his letter.”

There were phrases in it calculated to give the impression of light-hearted, indomitable resolution.  Jukes had written them in good faith, for he felt thus when he wrote.  He described with lurid effect the scenes in the ’tween-deck. “. . .  It struck me in a flash that those confounded Chinamen couldn’t tell we weren’t a desperate kind of robbers.  ’Tisn’t good to part the Chinaman from his money if he is the stronger party.  We need have been desperate indeed to go thieving in such weather, but what could these beggars know of us?  So, without thinking of it twice, I got the hands away in a jiffy.  Our work was done—­that the old man had set his heart on.  We cleared out without staying to inquire how they felt.  I am convinced that if they had not been so unmercifully shaken, and afraid—­each individual one of them —­to stand up, we would have been torn to pieces.  Oh!  It was pretty complete, I can tell you; and you may run to and fro across the Pond to the end of time before you find yourself with such a job on your hands.”

After this he alluded professionally to the damage done to the ship, and went on thus: 

“It was when the weather quieted down that the situation became confoundedly delicate.  It wasn’t made any better by us having been lately transferred to the Siamese flag; though the skipper can’t see that it makes any difference—­’as long as we are on board’—­he says.  There are feelings that this man simply hasn’t got—­and there’s an end of it.  You might just as well try to make a bedpost understand.  But apart from this it is an infernally lonely state for a ship to be going about the China seas with no proper consuls, not even a gunboat of her own anywhere, nor a body to go to in case of some trouble.