The Secret Sharer and Other Stories by Joseph Conrad

going down; and what between the firemen going faint and the chief going silly, it was worse than a dog’s life for him; he didn’t care a tinker’s curse how soon the whole show was blown out of the water. He seemed on the point of having a cry, but after regaining his breath he muttered darkly, “I’ll faint them,” and dashed off. He stopped upon the fiddle long enough to shake his fist at the unnatural daylight, and dropped into the dark hole with a whoop.
    When Jukes turned, his eyes fell upon the rounded back and the big red ears of Captain MacWhirr, who had come across. He did not look at his chief officer, but said at once, “That’s a very violent man, that second engineer. ”
    â€œJolly good second, anyhow,” grunted Jukes. “They can’t keep up steam,” he added, rapidly, and made a grab at the rail against the coming lurch.
    Captain MacWhirr, unprepared, took a run and brought himself up with a jerk by an awning stanchion.
    â€œA profane man,” he said, obstinately. “If this goes on, I’ll have to get rid of him the first chance.”
    â€œIt’s the heat,” said Jukes. “The weather’s awful. It would make a saint swear. Even up here I feel exactly as if I had my head tied up in a woolen blanket.”
    Captain MacWhirr looked up. “D’ye mean to say, Mr. Jukes, you ever had your head tied up in a blanket? What was that for?”
    â€œIt’s a manner of speaking, sir,” said Jukes, stolidly.
    â€œSome of you fellows do go on! What’s that about saints swearing? I wish you wouldn’t talk so wild. What sort of saint would that be that would swear? No more saint than yourself, I expect. And what’s a blanket got to do with it—or the weather either. . . . The heat does not make me swear—does it? It’s filthy bad temper. That’s what it is. And what’s the good of your talking like this?”
    Thus Captain MacWhirr expostulated against the use of images in speech, and at the end electrified Jukes by a contemptuous snort, followed by words of passion and resentment: “Damme! I’ll fire him out of the ship if he don’t look out.”
    And Jukes, incorrigible, thought: “Goodness me! Somebody’s put a new inside to my old man. Here’s temper, if you like. Of course it’s the weather; what else? It would make an angel quarrelsome—let alone a saint.”
    All the Chinamen on deck appeared at their last gasp.
    At its setting the sun had a diminished diameter and an expiring brown, rayless glow, as if millions of centuries elapsing since the morning had brought it near its end. A dense bank of cloud became visible to the northward; it had a sinister dark-olive tint, and lay low and motionless upon the sea, resembling a solid obstacle in the path of the ship. She went floundering towards it like an exhausted creature driven to its death. The coppery twilight retired slowly, and the darkness brought out overhead a swarm of unsteady, big stars, that, as if blown upon, flickered exceedingly and seemed to hang very near the earth. At eight o’clock Jukes went into the chart room to write up the ship’s log.
    He copied neatly out of the rough-book the number of miles, the course of the ship, and in the column for “wind” scrawled the word “calm” from top to bottom of the eight hours since noon. He was exasperated by the continuous, monotonous rolling of the ship. The heavy inkstand would slide away in a manner that suggested perverse intelligence in dodging the pen. Having written in the large space under the head of “Remarks” “Heat very oppressive,” he stuck the end of the penholder in his teeth, pipe fashion, and mopped his face carefully.
    â€œShip rolling heavily in a high cross swell,” he began again, and commented to himself, “Heavily is no word for it.” Then he wrote: “Sunset