Jukes, after a bewildered moment, had been helped by a roll to dart through; and as soon as his eyes took in the comparative vastness, peace and brilliance of the engine-room, the ship, setting her stern heavily in the water, sent him charging head down upon Mr. Rout.
The chief"s arm, long like a tentacle, and straightening as if worked by a spring, went out to meet him, and deflected his rush into a spin towards the speaking-tubes. At the same time Mr. Rout repeated earnestly:
"You"ve got to hurry up, whatever it is."
Jukes yelled "Are you there, sir?" and listened. Nothing. Suddenly the roar of the wind fell straight into his ear, but presently a small voice shoved aside the shouting hurricane quietly.
"You, Jukes?--Well?"
Jukes was ready to talk: it was only time that seemed to be wanting. It was easy enough to account for everything. He could perfectly imagine the coolies battened down in the reeking "tween-deck, lying sick and scared between the rows of chests. Then one of these chests--or perhaps several at once--breaking loose in a roll, knocking out others, sides splitting, lids flying open, and all these clumsy Chinamen rising up in a body to save their property. Afterwards every fling of the ship would hurl that tramping, yelling mob here and there, from side to side, in a whirl of smashed wood, torn clothing, rolling dollars. A struggle once started, they would be unable to stop themselves. Nothing could stop them now except main force. It was a disaster. He had seen it, and that was all he could say. Some of them must be dead, he believed. The rest would go on fighting. . . .
He sent up his words, tripping over each other, crowding the narrow tube. They mounted as if into a silence of an enlightened comprehension dwelling alone up there with a storm. And Jukes wanted to be dismissed from the face of that odious trouble intruding on the great need of the ship.
V
He waited. Before his eyes the engines turned with slow labour, that in the moment of going off into a mad fling would stop dead at Mr. Rout"s shout, "Look out, Beale!" They paused in an intelligent immobility, stilled in mid-stroke, a heavy crank arrested on the cant, as if conscious of danger and the pa.s.sage of time. Then, with a "Now, then!"
from the chief, and the sound of a breath expelled through clenched teeth, they would accomplish the interrupted revolution and begin another.
There was the prudent sagacity of wisdom and the deliberation of enormous strength in their movements. This was their work--this patient coaxing of a distracted ship over the fury of the waves and into the very eye of the wind. At times Mr. Rout"s chin would sink on his breast, and he watched them with knitted eyebrows as if lost in thought.
The voice that kept the hurricane out of Jukes" ear began: "Take the hands with you . . . ," and left off unexpectedly.
"What could I do with them, sir?"
A harsh, abrupt, imperious clang exploded suddenly. The three pairs of eyes flew up to the telegraph dial to see the hand jump from FULL to STOP, as if s.n.a.t.c.hed by a devil. And then these three men in the engineroom had the intimate sensation of a check upon the ship, of a strange shrinking, as if she had gathered herself for a desperate leap.
"Stop her!" bellowed Mr. Rout.
n.o.body--not even Captain MacWhirr, who alone on deck had caught sight of a white line of foam coming on at such a height that he couldn"t believe his eyes--n.o.body was to know the steepness of that sea and the awful depth of the hollow the hurricane had scooped out behind the running wall of water.
It raced to meet the ship, and, with a pause, as of girding the loins, the Nan-Shan lifted her bows and leaped. The flames in all the lamps sank, darkening the engine-room. One went out. With a tearing crash and a swirling, raving tumult, tons of water fell upon the deck, as though the ship had darted under the foot of a cataract.
Down there they looked at each other, stunned.
"Swept from end to end, by G.o.d!" bawled Jukes.
She dipped into the hollow straight down, as if going over the edge of the world. The engine-room toppled forward menacingly, like the inside of a tower nodding in an earthquake. An awful racket, of iron things falling, came from the stokehold. She hung on this appalling slant long enough for Beale to drop on his hands and knees and begin to crawl as if he meant to fly on all fours out of the engine-room, and for Mr. Rout to turn his head slowly, rigid, cavernous, with the lower jaw dropping.
Jukes had shut his eyes, and his face in a moment became hopelessly blank and gentle, like the face of a blind man.
At last she rose slowly, staggering, as if she had to lift a mountain with her bows.
Mr. Rout shut his mouth; Jukes blinked; and little Beale stood up hastily.
"Another one like this, and that"s the last of her," cried the chief.
He and Jukes looked at each other, and the same thought came into their heads. The Captain! Everything must have been swept away. Steering-gear gone--ship like a log. All over directly.
"Rush!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Rout thickly, glaring with enlarged, doubtful eyes at Jukes, who answered him by an irresolute glance.
The clang of the telegraph gong soothed them instantly. The black hand dropped in a flash from STOP to FULL.
"Now then, Beale!" cried Mr. Rout.
The steam hissed low. The piston-rods slid in and out. Jukes put his ear to the tube. The voice was ready for him. It said: "Pick up all the money. Bear a hand now. I"ll want you up here." And that was all.
"Sir?" called up Jukes. There was no answer.
He staggered away like a defeated man from the field of battle. He had got, in some way or other, a cut above his left eyebrow--a cut to the bone. He was not aware of it in the least: quant.i.ties of the China Sea, large enough to break his neck for him, had gone over his head, had cleaned, washed, and salted that wound. It did not bleed, but only gaped red; and this gash over the eye, his dishevelled hair, the disorder of his clothes, gave him the aspect of a man worsted in a fight with fists.
"Got to pick up the dollars." He appealed to Mr. Rout, smiling pitifully at random.
"What"s that?" asked Mr. Rout, wildly. "Pick up . . . ? I don"t care.
. . ." Then, quivering in every muscle, but with an exaggeration of paternal tone, "Go away now, for G.o.d"s sake. You deck people"ll drive me silly. There"s that second mate been going for the old man. Don"t you know? You fellows are going wrong for want of something to do. . . ."
At these words Jukes discovered in himself the beginnings of anger. Want of something to do--indeed. . . . Full of hot scorn against the chief, he turned to go the way he had come. In the stokehold the plump donkeyman toiled with his shovel mutely, as if his tongue had been cut out; but the second was carrying on like a noisy, undaunted maniac, who had preserved his skill in the art of stoking under a marine boiler.
"Hallo, you wandering officer! Hey! Can"t you get some of your slush-slingers to wind up a few of them ashes? I am getting choked with them here. Curse it! Hallo! Hey! Remember the articles: Sailors and firemen to a.s.sist each other. Hey! D"ye hear?"
Jukes was climbing out frantically, and the other, lifting up his face after him, howled, "Can"t you speak? What are you poking about here for?
What"s your game, anyhow?"
A frenzy possessed Jukes. By the time he was back amongst the men in the darkness of the alleyway, he felt ready to wring all their necks at the slightest sign of hanging back. The very thought of it exasperated him.
He couldn"t hang back. They shouldn"t.
The impetuosity with which he came amongst them carried them along. They had already been excited and startled at all his comings and goings--by the fierceness and rapidity of his movements; and more felt than seen in his rushes, he appeared formidable--busied with matters of life and death that brooked no delay. At his first word he heard them drop into the bunker one after another obediently, with heavy thumps.
They were not clear as to what would have to be done. "What is it? What is it?" they were asking each other. The boatswain tried to explain; the sounds of a great scuffle surprised them: and the mighty shocks, reverberating awfully in the black bunker, kept them in mind of their danger. When the boatswain threw open the door it seemed that an eddy of the hurricane, stealing through the iron sides of the ship, had set all these bodies whirling like dust: there came to them a confused uproar, a tempestuous tumult, a fierce mutter, gusts of screams dying away, and the tramping of feet mingling with the blows of the sea.
For a moment they glared amazed, blocking the doorway. Jukes pushed through them brutally. He said nothing, and simply darted in. Another lot of coolies on the ladder, struggling suicidally to break through the battened hatch to a swamped deck, fell off as before, and he disappeared under them like a man overtaken by a landslide.
The boatswain yelled excitedly: "Come along. Get the mate out. He"ll be trampled to death. Come on."
They charged in, stamping on b.r.e.a.s.t.s, on fingers, on faces, catching their feet in heaps of clothing, kicking broken wood; but before they could get hold of him Jukes emerged waist deep in a mult.i.tude of clawing hands. In the instant he had been lost to view, all the b.u.t.tons of his jacket had gone, its back had got split up to the collar, his waistcoat had been torn open. The central struggling ma.s.s of Chinamen went over to the roll, dark, indistinct, helpless, with a wild gleam of many eyes in the dim light of the lamps.
"Leave me alone--d.a.m.n you. I am all right," screeched Jukes. "Drive them forward. Watch your chance when she pitches. Forward with "em. Drive them against the bulkhead. Jam "em up."
The rush of the sailors into the seething "tween-deck was like a splash of cold water into a boiling cauldron. The commotion sank for a moment.
The bulk of Chinamen were locked in such a compact scrimmage that, linking their arms and aided by an appalling dive of the ship, the seamen sent it forward in one great shove, like a solid block. Behind their backs small cl.u.s.ters and loose bodies tumbled from side to side.
The boatswain performed prodigious feats of strength. With his long arms open, and each great paw clutching at a stanchion, he stopped the rush of seven entwined Chinamen rolling like a boulder. His joints cracked; he said, "Ha!" and they flew apart. But the carpenter showed the greater intelligence. Without saying a word to anybody he went back into the alleyway, to fetch several coils of cargo gear he had seen there--chain and rope. With these life-lines were rigged.
There was really no resistance. The struggle, however it began, had turned into a scramble of blind panic. If the coolies had started up after their scattered dollars they were by that time fighting only for their footing. They took each other by the throat merely to save themselves from being hurled about. Whoever got a hold anywhere would kick at the others who caught at his legs and hung on, till a roll sent them flying together across the deck.
The coming of the white devils was a terror. Had they come to kill? The individuals torn out of the ruck became very limp in the seamen"s hands: some, dragged aside by the heels, were pa.s.sive, like dead bodies, with open, fixed eyes. Here and there a coolie would fall on his knees as if begging for mercy; several, whom the excess of fear made unruly, were hit with hard fists between the eyes, and cowered; while those who were hurt submitted to rough handling, blinking rapidly without a plaint.
Faces streamed with blood; there were raw places on the shaven heads, scratches, bruises, torn wounds, gashes. The broken porcelain out of the chests was mostly responsible for the latter. Here and there a Chinaman, wild-eyed, with his tail unplaited, nursed a bleeding sole.