.

"The Chinamen! Why don't you speak plainly? Couldn't tell what you
meant. Never heard a lot of coolies spoken of as passengers before.
Passengers, indeed! What's come to you?"

Captain MacWhirr, closing the book on his forefinger, lowered his arm
and looked completely mystified. "Why are you thinking of the Chinamen,
Mr. Jukes?" he inquired.

Jukes took a plunge, like a man driven to it. "She's rolling her decks
full of water, sir. Thought you might put her head on perhaps--for a
while. Till this goes down a bit--very soon, I dare say. Head to the
eastward. I never knew a ship roll like this."

He held on in the doorway, and Captain MacWhirr, feeling his grip on
the shelf inadequate, made up his mind to let go in a hurry, and fell
heavily on the couch.

"Head to the eastward?" he said, struggling to sit up. "That's more than
four points off her course."

"Yes, sir. Fifty degrees. . . . Would just bring her head far enough
round to meet this. . . ."

Captain MacWhirr was now sitting up. He had not dropped the book, and he
had not lost his place.

"To the eastward?" he repeated, with dawning astonishment. "To the . . .
Where do you think we are bound to? You want me to haul a full-powered
steamship four points off her course to make the Chinamen comfortable!
Now, I've heard more than enough of mad things done in the world--but
this. . . . If I didn't know you, Jukes, I would think you were in
liquor. Steer four points off. . . . And what afterwards? Steer four
points over the other way, I suppose, to make the course good. What put
it into your head that I would start to tack a steamer as if she were a
sailing-ship?"

"Jolly good thing she isn't," threw in Jukes, with bitter readiness.
"She would have rolled every blessed stick out of her this afternoon."

"Aye! And you just would have had to stand and see them go," said
Captain MacWhirr, showing a certain animation. "It's a dead calm, isn't
it?"

"It is, sir. But there's something out of the common coming, for sure."

"Maybe. I suppose you have a notion I should be getting out of the
way of that dirt," said Captain MacWhirr, speaking with the utmost
simplicity of manner and tone, and fixing the oilcloth on the floor
with a heavy stare. Thus he noticed neither Jukes' discomfiture nor the
mixture of vexation and astonished respect on his face.

"Now, here's this book," he continued with deliberation, slapping his
thigh with the closed volume. "I've been