Jukes burst out: “If you think it was an easy job—”
But his captain, clinging to the rail, paid no attention. “According to the books the worst is not over yet.”
“If most of them hadn't been half dead with seasickness and fright, not one of us would have come out of that 'tween-deck alive,” said Jukes.
“Had to do what's fair by them,” mumbled MacWhirr, stolidly. “You don't find everything in books.”
“Why, I believe they would have risen on us if I hadn't ordered the hands out of that pretty quick,” continued Jukes with warmth.
After the whisper of their shouts, their ordinary tones, so distinct, rang out very loud to their ears in the amazing stillness of the air. It seemed to them they were talking in a dark and echoing vault.
Through a jagged aperture in the dome of clouds the light of a few stars fell upon the black sea, rising and falling confusedly. Sometimes the head of a watery cone would topple on board and mingle with the rolling flurry of foam on the swamped deck; and the Nan-Shan wallowed heavily at the bottom of a circular cistern of clouds. This ring of dense vapours, gyrating madly round the calm of the centre, encompassed the ship like a motionless and unbroken wall of an aspect inconceivably sinister. Within, the sea, as if agitated by an internal commotion, leaped in peaked mounds that jostled each other, slapping heavily against her sides; and a low moaning sound, the infinite plaint of the storm's fury, came from beyond the limits of the menacing calm. Captain MacWhirr remained silent, and Jukes' ready ear caught suddenly the faint, long-drawn roar of some immense wave rushing unseen under that thick blackness, which made the appalling boundary of his vision.
“Of course,” he started resentfully, “they thought we had caught at the chance to plunder them. Of course! You said—pick up the money. Easier said than done. They couldn't tell what was in our heads. We came in, smash—right into the middle of them. Had to do it by a rush.”
“As long as it's done . . . ,” mumbled the Captain, without attempting to look at Jukes. “Had to do what's fair.”
“We shall find yet there's the devil to pay when this is over,” said Jukes, feeling very sore. “Let them only recover a bit, and you'll see. They will fly at our throats, sir. Don't forget, sir, she isn't a British ship now. These brutes know it well, too. The damned Siamese flag.”