“She put her foot on the rung just below my face.  I gripped as much
     of her ankle as the stiff leather allowed.

     “‘Clear out.  Don’t be a fool.’

     “Andrews, the first mate, poured out a flood of blasphemy.  What the
     this, that and the other were we waiting for?

     “‘Mr. Andrews,’ I shouted, ‘send this woman to her cabin.’

     “’Oh, go to hell!  Tumble down every one of you, or I’ll damn soon
     make you,’ cried Andrews.

“He was in a vile temper, being responsible for the snugness of the cargo, and the cargo lay about as snug as a dormitory of devils.  He was sorry afterwards, poor chap, for his lack of courtesy, but at the moment he didn’t care who went down into the hold, or who was killed, so long as this infernal cargo was righted and the crazy old tub didn’t go down.

“So I descended.  It was ordained.  Liosha followed.  And once down we were carried away out of ourselves by a nightmare of toil and peril.  Andrews and second were there yelling orders.  We obeyed in some subconscious way.  How we heard I don’t know.  For peace and quiet give me a battlefield.  Twenty men in semi-darkness, scarce able to stand, fighting blind, mad forces of half a ton each.  The huge crates of deal seemed so innocent and harmless on the quay-side, but charging about that swaying, rocking lower deck, they looked malignant, like grimy blocks of Hell’s anger.  I don’t know what I did.  All I can say is that I never before felt my muscles about to snap—­queer feeling that—­and I think I’m about as tough as they make ’em.

“Liosha worked as well as any man in the bunch.  I only caught sight of her now and then . . . you see what we had to do, don’t you? . . .  We had to secure all these infernal things that were running amuck and ease up the rest of the cargo that had got jammed on the port side.  There were accidents.  Three or four were knocked out.  Petersen, the Swede, had his leg crushed.  I don’t know what was wrong at the time.  He was working next me, and a roll of the ship brought an ugly crate over him.  He couldn’t get up.  He looked ghastly.  So I took him on my back and clawed my way up the iron ladder and reached the deck somehow, and staggered along, barging into everything—­it was blowing half a gale—­and once I fell and he screamed like a pig, poor devil.  But I picked him up and got him into the fo’c’sle and stuck him in a bunk.  The Portugee cook, sick of fever—­I think he’s a blighted malingerer—­was the only creature there.  I routed him out, in the dim mephitic place reeking of sour bedding, and put Petersen in his charge.  Then I went back through the drenching seas to the hatch.  There was just enough room for a man’s body to squeeze through down the ladder.  I went down into the same hell-broth of sweat and confusion.  The ground you stood upon might have been the back of a super-Titanic butterfly.