The wind
howled, hummed, whistled, with sudden booming gusts that rattled
the doors and shutters in the vicious patter of sprays. Two coils of
lead-line and a small canvas bag hung on a long lanyard, swung wide off,
and came back clinging to the bulkheads. The gratings underfoot were
nearly afloat; with every sweeping blow of a sea, water squirted
violently through the cracks all round the door, and the man at the
helm had flung down his cap, his coat, and stood propped against the
gear-casing in a striped cotton shirt open on his breast. The little
brass wheel in his hands had the appearance of a bright and fragile
toy. The cords of his neck stood hard and lean, a dark patch lay in the
hollow of his throat, and his face was still and sunken as in death.
Captain MacWhirr wiped his eyes. The sea that had nearly taken him
overboard had, to his great annoyance, washed his sou'-wester hat off
his bald head. The fluffy, fair hair, soaked and darkened, resembled a
mean skein of cotton threads festooned round his bare skull. His face,
glistening with sea-water, had been made crimson with the wind, with
the sting of sprays. He looked as though he had come off sweating from
before a furnace.
"You here?" he muttered, heavily.
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