"Oh, no! None of you here
shall make a fool of me if I know it," he mumbled to himself.
Jukes reflected rapidly that this second mate was a mean little beast,
and in his heart he wished poor Jack Allen had never smashed himself up
in the coal-lighter. The far-off blackness ahead of the ship was like
another night seen through the starry night of the earth--the starless
night of the immensities beyond the created universe, revealed in its
appalling stillness through a low fissure in the glittering sphere of
which the earth is the kernel.
"Whatever there might be about," said Jukes, "we are steaming straight
into it."
"You've said it," caught up the second mate, always with his back to
Jukes. "You've said it, mind--not I."
"Oh, go to Jericho!" said Jukes, frankly; and the other emitted a
triumphant little chuckle.
"You've said it," he repeated.
"And what of that?"
"I've known some real good men get into trouble with their skippers for
saying a dam' sight less," answered the second mate feverishly. "Oh, no!
You don't catch me."
"You seem deucedly anxious not to give yourself away," said Jukes,
completely soured by such absurdity. "I wouldn't be afraid to say what I
think."
"Aye, to me! That's no great trick.
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