e wrote:
"Sunset threatening, with a low bank of clouds to N. and E. Sky clear
overhead."

Sprawling over the table with arrested pen, he glanced out of the door,
and in that frame of his vision he saw all the stars flying upwards
between the teakwood jambs on a black sky. The whole lot took flight
together and disappeared, leaving only a blackness flecked with white
flashes, for the sea was as black as the sky and speckled with foam
afar. The stars that had flown to the roll came back on the return swing
of the ship, rushing downwards in their glittering multitude, not of
fiery points, but enlarged to tiny discs brilliant with a clear wet
sheen.

Jukes watched the flying big stars for a moment, and then wrote: "8 P.M.
Swell increasing. Ship labouring and taking water on her decks. Battened
down the coolies for the night. Barometer still falling." He paused, and
thought to himself, "Perhaps nothing whatever'll come of it." And then
he closed resolutely his entries: "Every appearance of a typhoon coming
on."

On going out he had to stand aside, and Captain MacWhirr strode over the
doorstep without saying a word or making a sign.

"Shut the door, Mr. Jukes, will you?" he cried from within.

Jukes turned back to do so, muttering ironically: "Afraid to catch cold,
I suppose." It was his watch below, but he yearned for communion with
his kind; and he remarked cheerily to the second mate: "Doesn't look so
bad, after all--does it?"

The second mate was marching to and fro on the bridge, tripping down
with small steps one moment, and the next climbing with difficulty the
shifting slope of the deck. At the sound of Jukes' voice he stood still,
facing forward, but made no reply.

"Hallo! That's a heavy one," said Jukes, swaying to meet the long roll
till his lowered hand touched the planks. This time the second mate made
in his throat a noise of an unfriendly nature.

He was an oldish, shabby little fellow, with bad teeth and no hair on
his face. He had been shipped in a hurry in Shanghai, that trip when
the second officer brought from home had delayed the ship three hours
in port by contriving (in some manner Captain MacWhirr could never
understand) to fall overboard into an empty coal-lighter lying
alongside, and had to be sent ashore to the hospital with concussion of
the brain and a broken limb or two.

Jukes was not discouraged by the unsympathetic sound. "The Chinamen must
be having a lovely time of it down ther