’He stood on the starboard side of the bridge, as far as he could get from the struggle for the boat, which went on with the agitation of madness and the stealthiness of a conspiracy.  The two Malays had meantime remained holding to the wheel.  Just picture to yourselves the actors in that, thank God! unique, episode of the sea, four beside themselves with fierce and secret exertions, and three looking on in complete immobility, above the awnings covering the profound ignorance of hundreds of human beings, with their weariness, with their dreams, with their hopes, arrested, held by an invisible hand on the brink of annihilation.  For that they were so, makes no doubt to me:  given the state of the ship, this was the deadliest possible description of accident that could happen.  These beggars by the boat had every reason to go distracted with funk.  Frankly, had I been there, I would not have given as much as a counterfeit farthing for the ship’s chance to keep above water to the end of each successive second.  And still she floated!  These sleeping pilgrims were destined to accomplish their whole pilgrimage to the bitterness of some other end.  It was as if the Omnipotence whose mercy they confessed had needed their humble testimony on earth for a while longer, and had looked down to make a sign, “Thou shalt not!” to the ocean.  Their escape would trouble me as a prodigiously inexplicable event, did I not know how tough old iron can be—­as tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then, worn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life.  Not the least wonder of these twenty minutes, to my mind, is the behaviour of the two helmsmen.  They were amongst the native batch of all sorts brought over from Aden to give evidence at the inquiry.  One of them, labouring under intense bashfulness, was very young, and with his smooth, yellow, cheery countenance looked even younger than he was.  I remember perfectly Brierly asking him, through the interpreter, what he thought of it at the time, and the interpreter, after a short colloquy, turning to the court with an important air—­

’"He says he thought nothing.”

’The other, with patient blinking eyes, a blue cotton handkerchief, faded with much washing, bound with a smart twist over a lot of grey wisps, his face shrunk into grim hollows, his brown skin made darker by a mesh of wrinkles, explained that he had a knowledge of some evil thing befalling the ship, but there had been no order; he could not remember an order; why should he leave the helm?  To some further questions he jerked back his spare shoulders, and declared it never came into his mind then that the white men were about to leave the ship through fear of death.  He did not believe it now.  There might have been secret reasons.  He wagged his old chin knowingly.  Aha! secret reasons.  He was a man of great experience, and he wanted that white Tuan to know—­he turned towards Brierly, who didn’t raise his