They made a clean
breach over her, as over a deep-swimming log; and the gathered weight
of crashes menaced monstrously from afar. The breakers flung out of the
night with a ghostly light on their crests--the light of sea-foam that
in a ferocious, boiling-up pale flash showed upon the slender body of
the ship the toppling rush, the downfall, and the seething mad scurry
of each wave. Never for a moment could she shake herself clear of
the water; Jukes, rigid, perceived in her motion the ominous sign of
haphazard floundering. She was no longer struggling intelligently. It
was the beginning of the end; and the note of busy concern in Captain
MacWhirr's voice sickened him like an exhibition of blind and pernicious
folly.
The spell of the storm had fallen upon Jukes. He was penetrated by it,
absorbed by it; he was rooted in it with a rigour of dumb attention.
Captain MacWhirr persisted in his cries, but the wind got between them
like a solid wedge. He hung round Jukes' neck as heavy as a millstone,
and suddenly the sides of their heads knocked together.
"Jukes! Mr. Jukes, I say!"
He had to answer that voice that would not be silenced. He answered in
the customary manner: ". . . Yes, sir."
And directly, his heart, corrupted by the storm that breeds a craving
for peace, rebelled against the tyranny of training and command.
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