I could not help remembering what Miss West had just told me--that ships always sailed with several lunatics or idiots in their crews.

But these looked as if they were all lunatic or feeble-minded.

And I, too, wondered where such a mass of human wreckage could have been obtained.

There was something wrong with all of them.
Their bodies were twisted, their faces distorted, and almost without exception they were under-sized.

The several quite fairly large men I marked were vacant-faced.