Tim met it
with an unmoved countenance, one corner of his under lip caught
up on a tooth, his eyes fleeting into the blackness twenty miles
ahead, and the fierce sparks flying from his knuckles at every
turn of the hand. Now and again he shook his head to clear the
sweat trickling from his eyebrows, and it was then that George,
watching his chance, would slide down the life-rail and swab his
face quickly with a big red handkerchief. I never imagined that a
human being could so continuously labour and so collectedly think
as did Tim through that Hell's half-hour when the flurry was at
its worst. We were dragged hither and yon by warm or, frozen
suctions, belched up on the tops of wulii-was, spun down by
vortices and clubbed aside by laterals under a dizzying rush of
stars in the, company of a drunken moon.
I heard the rushing click of the midship-engine-lever sliding in
and out, the low growl of the lift-shunts, and, louder than the
yelling winds without, the scream of the bow-rudder gouging into
any lull that promised hold for an instant.
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