indignation.
"It's only to let you see, Mr. Jukes, that you don't find everything in
books. All these rules for dodging breezes and circumventing the winds
of heaven, Mr. Jukes, seem to me the maddest thing, when you come to
look at it sensibly."

He raised his eyes, saw Jukes gazing at him dubiously, and tried to
illustrate his meaning.

"About as queer as your extraordinary notion of dodging the ship head
to sea, for I don't know how long, to make the Chinamen comfortable;
whereas all we've got to do is to take them to Fu-chau, being timed to
get there before noon on Friday. If the weather delays me--very well.
There's your log-book to talk straight about the weather. But suppose
I went swinging off my course and came in two days late, and they asked
me: 'Where have you been all that time, Captain?' What could I say to
that? 'Went around to dodge the bad weather,' I would say. 'It must've
been dam' bad,' they would say. 'Don't know,' I would have to say; 'I've
dodged clear of it.' See that, Jukes? I have been thinking it all out
this afternoon."

He looked up again in his unseeing, unimaginative way. No one had ever
heard him say so much at one time. Jukes, with his arms open in the
doorway, was like a man invited to behold a miracle. Unbounded wonder
was the intellectual meaning of his eye, while incredulity was seated in
his whole countenance.

"A gale is a gale, Mr. Jukes," resumed the Captain, "and a full-powered
steam-ship has got to face it. There's just so much dirty weather
knocking about the world, and the proper thing is to go through it with
none of what old Captain Wilson of the Melita calls 'storm strategy.'
The other day ashore I heard him hold forth about it to a lot of
shipmasters who came in and sat at a table next to mine. It seemed to me
the greatest nonsense. He was telling them how he outmanoeuvred, I
think he said, a terrific gale, so that it never came nearer than fifty
miles to him. A neat piece of head-work he called it. How he knew there
was a terrific gale fifty miles off beats me altogether. It was like
listening to a crazy man. I would have thought Captain Wilson was old
enough to know better."

Captain MacWhirr ceased for a moment, then said, "It's your watch below,
Mr. Jukes?"

Jukes came to himself with a start. "Yes, sir."

"Leave orders to call me at the slightest change," said the Captain.
He reached up to put the book away, and tucked his legs upon the couch.
"Shut the do