was letting
himself sink slowly into the depths of bodily misery. His mind became
concentrated upon himself in an aimless, idle way, and when something
pushed lightly at the back of his knees he nearly, as the saying is,
jumped out of his skin.

In the start forward he bumped the back of Captain MacWhirr, who didn't
move; and then a hand gripped his thigh. A lull had come, a menacing
lull of the wind, the holding of a stormy breath--and he felt himself
pawed all over. It was the boatswain. Jukes recognized these hands, so
thick and enormous that they seemed to belong to some new species of
man.

The boatswain had arrived on the bridge, crawling on all fours against
the wind, and had found the chief mate's legs with the top of his head.
Immediately he crouched and began to explore Jukes' person upwards with
prudent, apologetic touches, as became an inferior.

He was an ill-favoured, undersized, gruff sailor of fifty, coarsely
hairy, short-legged, long-armed, resembling an elderly ape. His
strength was immense; and in his great lumpy paws, bulging like brown
boxing-gloves on the end of furry forearms, the heaviest objects were
handled like playthings. Apart from the grizzled pelt on his chest, the
menacing demeanour and the hoarse voice, he had none of the classical
attributes of his rating. His good nature almost amounted to imbecility:
the men did what they liked with him, and he had not an ounce of
initiative in his character, which was easy-going and talkative. For
these reasons Jukes disliked him; but Captain MacWhirr, to Jukes'
scornful disgust, seemed to regard him as a first-rate petty officer.

He pulled himself up by Jukes' coat, taking that liberty with the
greatest moderation, and only so far as it was forced upon him by the
hurricane.

"What is it, boss'n, what is it?" yelled Jukes, impatiently. What could
that fraud of a boss'n want on the bridge? The typhoon had got on Jukes'
nerves. The husky bellowings of the other, though unintelligible, seemed
to suggest a state of lively satisfaction.

There could be no mistake. The old fool was pleased with something.

The boatswain's other hand had found some other body, for in a changed
tone he began to inquire: "Is it you, sir? Is it you, sir?" The wind
strangled his howls.

"Yes!" cried Captain MacWhirr.

IV

All that the boatswain, out of a superabundance of yells, could make
clear to Captain MacWhirr was the bizarre intelligence that "All them