He heard Captain MacWhirr's exasperated
"What? What?" and the strained pitch of the other's hoarseness. "In a
lump . . . seen them myself. . . . Awful sight, sir . . . thought . . .
tell you."
Jukes remained indifferent, as if rendered irresponsible by the force
of the hurricane, which made the very thought of action utterly vain.
Besides, being very young, he had found the occupation of keeping his
heart completely steeled against the worst so engrossing that he had
come to feel an overpowering dislike towards any other form of activity
whatever. He was not scared; he knew this because, firmly believing he
would never see another sunrise, he remained calm in that belief.
These are the moments of do-nothing heroics to which even good men
surrender at times. Many officers of ships can no doubt recall a case
in their experience when just such a trance of confounded stoicism would
come all at once over a whole ship's company. Jukes, however, had
no wide experience of men or storms. He conceived himself to be
calm--inexorably calm; but as a matter of fact he was daunted; not
abjectly, but only so far as a decent man may, without becoming
loathsome to himself.
It was rather like a forced-on numbness of spirit. The long, long
stress of a gale does it; the suspense of the interminably culminating
catastrophe; and there is a bodily fatigue in the mere holding on to
existence within the excessive tumult; a searching and insidious fatigue
that penetrates deep into a man's breast to cast down and sadden his
heart, which is incorrigible, and of all the gifts of the earth--even
before life itself--aspires to peace.
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