Straight away on through the night the six men stuck to their savage toil, the blood from their blistered hands reddening the shafts of the shovels.  Every now and again one or another of them, choked with the dust, went to get a draft of lukewarm water from the scuttlebutt.  But no one stayed over long on these excursions.  The breeze had blown up into a gale.  The night overhead-was starless and moonless, but every minute the black heaven was split by spurts of lightning, which showed the laboring, dishevelled ship set among great mountains of breaking seas.

The sight would have been bad from a well-manned, powerful steamboat; from the deck of the derelict it approached the terrific.  With the seas constantly crashing on board of her, to have left the hatches open would have been, in her semi-waterlogged condition, to court swamping, and after midnight these were battened down, and the men with the shovels worked among the frightened, squeaking rats in the closed-in box of the hold.  There were four on board the ship during that terrible night who openly owned to being cowed, and freely bewailed their insanity in ever being lured away from the M’poso.  Dayton-Philipps had sufficient self-control to keep his feelings, whatever they were, unstated; but Kettle faced all difficulties with indomitable courage and a smiling face.

“I believe,” said Dayton-Philipps to him once when they were taking a spell together at the clanking pumps, “you really glory in finding yourself in this beastly mess.”

“I have got to earn out the salvage of this ship somehow,” Kettle shouted back to him through the windy darkness, “and I don’t much care what work comes between now and when I handle the check.”

“You’ve got a fine confidence.  I’m not grumbling, mind, but it seems very unlikely we shall be still afloat to-morrow morning.”

“We shall pull through, I tell you.”

“Well,” said Dayton-Philipps, “I suppose you are a man that’s always met with success.  I’m not.  I’ve got blundering bad luck all along, and if there’s a hole available, I get into it.”

Captain Kettle laughed aloud into the storm.  “Me!” he cried.  “Me in luck!  There’s not been a man more bashed and kicked by luck between here and twenty years back.  I suppose God thought it good for me, and He’s kept me down to my bearings in bad luck ever since I first got my captain’s ticket.  But He’s not cruel, Mr. Philipps, and He doesn’t push a man beyond the end of his patience.  My time’s come at last.  He’s given me something to make up for all the weary waiting.  He’s sent me this derelict, and He only expects me to do my human best, and then He’ll let me get her safely home.”

“Good Heavens, Skipper, what are you talking about?  Have you seen visions or something?”