not belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren’t bad chaps though.  Even the skipper himself . . .  His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing.  The quality of these men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . . .  Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . .  The life was easy and he was too sure of himself—­too sure of himself to . . .  The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider’s web.

The second engineer was coming by easy transitions to the consideration of his finances and of his courage.

’Who’s drunk?  I?  No, no, captain!  That won’t do.  You ought to know by this time the chief ain’t free-hearted enough to make a sparrow drunk, b’gosh.  I’ve never been the worse for liquor in my life; the stuff ain’t made yet that would make me drunk.  I could drink liquid fire against your whisky peg for peg, b’gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber.  If I thought I was drunk I would jump overboard—­do away with myself, b’gosh.  I would!  Straight!  And I won’t go off the bridge.  Where do you expect me to take the air on a night like this, eh?  On deck amongst that vermin down there?  Likely—­ain’t it!  And I am not afraid of anything you can do.’

The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a little without a word.

‘I don’t know what fear is,’ pursued the engineer, with the enthusiasm of sincere conviction.  ‘I am not afraid of doing all the bloomin’ work in this rotten hooker, b’gosh!  And a jolly good thing for you that there are some of us about the world that aren’t afraid of their lives, or where would you be—­you and this old thing here with her plates like brown paper—­brown paper, s’elp me?  It’s all very fine for you—­you get a power of pieces out of her one way and another; but what about me—­what do I get?  A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and find yourself.  I wish to ask you respectfully—­respectfully, mind—­who wouldn’t chuck a dratted job like this?  ’Tain’t safe, s’elp me, it ain’t!  Only I am one of them fearless fellows . . .’

He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind.  He said ‘Damn!’ as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching:  Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea.  Then they looked upwards at the stars.