“All that are any good for anything, sir.”

Both voices were very quiet and unringing; without any special character of readiness or discouragement.  Very matter-of-fact voices.

“We must try to haul this mainsail close up,” I said.

The shadows swayed away from me without a word.  Those men were the ghosts of themselves, and their weight on a rope could be no more than the weight of a bunch of ghosts.  Indeed, if ever a sail was hauled up by sheer spiritual strength it must have been that sail, for, properly speaking, there was not muscle enough for the task in the whole ship let alone the miserable lot of us on deck.  Of course, I took the lead in the work myself.  They wandered feebly after me from rope to rope, stumbling and panting.  They toiled like Titans.  We were half-an-hour at it at least, and all the time the black universe made no sound.  When the last leech-line was made fast, my eyes, accustomed to the darkness, made out the shapes of exhausted men drooping over the rails, collapsed on hatches.  One hung over the after-capstan, sobbing for breath, and I stood amongst them like a tower of strength, impervious to disease and feeling only the sickness of my soul.  I waited for some time fighting against the weight of my sins, against my sense of unworthiness, and then I said: 

“Now, men, we’ll go aft and square the mainyard.  That’s about all we can do for the ship; and for the rest she must take her chance.”

VI

As we all went up it occurred to me that there ought to be a man at the helm.  I raised my voice not much above a whisper, and, noiselessly, an uncomplaining spirit in a fever-wasted body appeared in the light aft, the head with hollow eyes illuminated against the blackness which had swallowed up our world—­and the universe.  The bared forearm extended over the upper spokes seemed to shine with a light of its own.

I murmured to that luminous appearance: 

“Keep the helm right amidships.”

It answered in a tone of patient suffering: 

“Right amidships, sir.”

Then I descended to the quarter-deck.  It was impossible to tell whence the blow would come.  To look round the ship was to look into a bottomless, black pit.  The eye lost itself in inconceivable depths.

I wanted to ascertain whether the ropes had been picked up off the deck.  One could only do that by feeling with one’s feet.  In my cautious progress I came against a man in whom I recognized Ransome.  He possessed an unimpaired physical solidity which was manifest to me at the contact.  He was leaning against the quarter-deck capstan and kept silent.  It was like a revelation.  He was the collapsed figure sobbing for breath I had noticed before we went on the poop.

“You have been helping with the mainsail!” I exclaimed in a low tone.

“Yes, sir,” sounded his quiet voice.