The icy south wind howled exultingly under the sombre splendour of the
sky. The cold shook the men with a resistless violence as though it had
tried to shake them to pieces. Short moans were swept unheard off the
stiff lips. Some complained in mutters of "not feeling themselves below
the waist;" while those who had closed their eyes, imagined they had a
block of ice on their chests. Others, alarmed at not feeling any pain
in their fingers, beat the deck feebly with their hands--obstinate and
exhausted. Wamibo stared vacant and dreamy. The Scandinavians kept on a
meaningless mutter through chattering teeth. The spare Scotchmen, with
determined efforts, kept their lower jaws still. The West-country men
lay big and stolid in an invulnerable surliness. A man yawned and swore
in turns. Another breathed with a rattle in his throat. Two elderly
hard-weather shellbacks, fast side by side, whispered dismally to one
another about the landlady of a boarding-house in Sunderland, whom they
both knew. They extolled her motherliness and her liberality; they
tried to talk about the joint of beef and the big fire in the downstairs
kitchen.
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