sses exhausted but never appeased--the wrath and fury
of the passionate sea. He knew it existed, as we know that crime and
abominations exist; he had heard of it as a peaceable citizen in a town
hears of battles, famines, and floods, and yet knows nothing of what
these things mean--though, indeed, he may have been mixed up in a street
row, have gone without his dinner once, or been soaked to the skin in
a shower. Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as
some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into
a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been
made to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror.
There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate--or thus disdained by
destiny or by the sea.

II

Observing the steady fall of the barometer, Captain MacWhirr thought,
"There's some dirty weather knocking about." This is precisely what he
thought. He had had an experience of moderately dirty weather--the term
dirty as applied to the weather implying only moderate discomfort to the
seaman. Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that the
end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic
disturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information
under the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he had
no experience of cataclysms, and belief does not necessarily imply
comprehension. The wisdom of his county had pronounced by means of an
Act of Parliament that before he could be considered as fit to take
charge of a ship he should be able to answer certain simple questions on
the subject of circular storms such as hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons;
and apparently he had answered them, since he was now in command of the
Nan-Shan in the China seas during the season of typhoons. But if he
had answered he remembered nothing of it. He was, however, conscious of
being made uncomfortable by the clammy heat. He came out on the bridge,
and found no relief to this oppression. The air seemed thick. He gasped
like a fish, and began to believe himself greatly out of sorts.

The Nan-Shan was ploughing a vanishing furrow upon the circle of the
sea that had the surface and the shimmer of an undulating piece of
gray silk. The sun, pale and without rays, poured down leaden heat in a
strangely indecisive light, and the Chinamen were lying prostrate about
the decks. Their bloodless, pinched, yellow faces were l