There's a rhythmical chant down on the gundeck that slowly builds and then explodes into a drumming of many feet on mahogany stair-steps, and suddenly Minerva 's deck is crowded with sailors, running about and colliding with each other, like a living demonstration of Hooke's ideas about heat. Daniel wonders if perhaps a fire has been noticed down in the powder-magazine, and the sailors have all come up to abandon ship. But this is a highly organized sort of panic.