"Lost his nerve," the voice from above continued in a

matter-of-fact tone. "Damned awkward circumstance."
Mr. Rout, listening with bowed neck, opened his eyes wide at

this. However, he heard something like the sounds of a scuffle
and broken exclamations coming down to him. He strained his

hearing; and all the time Beale, the third engineer, with his
arms uplifted, held between the palms of his hands the rim of a

little black wheel projecting at the side of a big copper pipe.
He seemed to be poising it above his head, as though it were a

correct attitude in some sort of game.
To steady himself, he pressed his shoulder against the white

bulkhead, one knee bent, and a sweat-rag tucked in his belt
hanging on his hip. His smooth cheek was begrimed and flushed,

and the coal dust on his eyelids, like the black pencilling of a
make-up, enhanced the liquidbrilliance of the whites, giving to

his youthful face something of a feminine, exotic and fascinating
aspect. When the ship pitched he would with hasty movements of

his hands screw hard at the little wheel.
"Gone crazy," began the Captain's voice suddenly in the tube.

"Rushed at me. . . . Just now. Had to knock him down. . . .
This minute. You heard, Mr. Rout?"

"The devil!" muttered Mr. Rout. "Look out, Beale!"
His shout rang out like the blast of a warningtrumpet, between

the iron walls of the engine-room. Painted white, they rose high
into the dusk of the skylight, sloping like a roof; and the whole

lofty space resembled the interior of a monument, divided by
floors of iron grating, with lights flickering at different

levels, and a mass of gloom lingering in the middle, within the
columnar stir of machinery under the motionless swelling of the

cylinders. A loud and wild resonance, made up of all the noises
of the hurricane, dwelt in the still warmth of the air. There

was in it the smell of hot metal, of oil, and a slight mist of
steam. The blows of the sea seemed to traverse it in an

unringing, stunning shock, from side to side.
Gleams, like pale long flames, trembled upon the polish of metal;

from the flooring below the enormous crank-heads emerged in their
turns with a flash of brass and steel -- going over; while the

connecting-rods, big-jointed, like skeleton limbs, seemed to
thrust them down and pull them up again with an irresistible

precision. And deep in the half-light other rods dodged
deliberately to and fro, crossheads nodded, discs of metal rubbed

smoothly against each other, slow and gentle, in a commingling of
shadows and gleams.

Sometimes all those powerful and unerring movements would slow
down simultaneously, as if they had been the functions of a

living organism, stricken suddenly by the blight of languor; and
Mr. Rout's eyes would blaze darker in his long sallow face. He

was fighting this fight in a pair of carpet slippers. A short
shiny jacketbarely covered his loins, and his white wrists

protruded far out of the tight sleeves, as though the emergency
had added to his stature, had lengthened his limbs, augmented his

pallor, hollowed his eyes.
He moved, climbing high up, disappearing low down, with a

restless, purposeful industry, and when he stood still, holding
the guard-rail in front of the starting-gear, he would keep

glancing to the right at the steam-gauge, at the water-gauge,
fixed upon the white wall in the light of a swaying lamp. The

mouths of two speakingtubes gaped stupidly at his elbow, and the
dial of the engine-room telegraph resembled a clock of large

diameter, bearing on its face curt words instead of figures. The
grouped letters stood out heavily black, around the pivot-head of

the indicator, emphatically symbolic of loud exclamations: AHEAD,
ASTERN, SLOW, Half, STAND BY; and the fat black hand pointed

downwards to the word FULL, which, thus singled out, captured the
eye as a sharp cry secures attention.

The wood-encased bulk of the low-pressure cylinder, frowning
portly from above, emitted a faint wheeze at every thrust, and

except for that low hiss the engines worked their steel limbs
headlong or slow with a silent, determined smoothness. And all

this, the white walls, the moving steel, the floor plates under
Solomon Rout's feet, the floors of iron grating above his head,

the dusk and the gleams, uprose and sank continuously, with one
accord, upon the harsh wash of the waves against the ship's side.

The whole loftiness of the place, booming hollow to the great
voice of the wind, swayed at the top like a tree, would go over

bodily, as if borne down this way and that by the tremendous
blasts.

"You've got to hurry up," shouted Mr. Rout, as soon as he saw
Jukes appear in the stokehold doorway.

Jukes' glance was wandering and tipsy; his red face was puffy, as
though he had overslept himself. He had had an arduous road, and

had travelled over it with immense vivacity, the agitation of his
mind corresponding to the exertions of his body. He had rushed

up out of the bunker, stumbling in the dark alleyway amongst a
lot of bewildered men who, trod upon, asked "What's up, sir?" in

awed mutters all round him; -- down the stokehold ladder, missing
many iron rungs in his hurry, down into a place deep as a well,

black as Tophet, tipping over back and forth like a see-saw. The
water in the bilges thundered at each roll, and lumps of coal

skipped to and fro, from end to end, rattling like an avalanche
of pebbles on a slope of iron.

Somebody in there moaned with pain, and somebody else could be
seen crouching over what seemed the prone body of a dead man; a

lusty voice blasphemed; and the glow under each fire-door was
like a pool of flaming blood radiating quietly in a velvety

blackness.
A gust of wind struck upon the nape of Jukes' neck and next

moment he felt it streaming about his wet ankles. The stokehold
ventilators hummed: in front of the six fire-doors two wild

figures, stripped to the waist, staggered and stooped, wrestling
with two shovels.

"Hallo! Plenty of draught now," yelled the second engineer at
once, as though he had been all the time looking out for Jukes.

The donkeyman, a dapper little chap with a dazzling fair skin and
a tiny, gingery moustache, worked in a sort of mute transport.

They were keeping a full head of steam, and a profound rumbling,
as of an empty furniture van trotting over a bridge, made a

sustained bass to all the other noises of the place.
"Blowing off all the time," went on yelling the second. With a

sound as of a hundred scoured saucepans, the orifice of a
ventilator spat upon his shoulder a sudden gush of salt water,

and he volleyed a stream of curses upon all things on earth
including his own soul, ripping and raving, and all the time

attending to his business. With a sharp clash of metal the
ardent pale glare of the fire opened upon his bullet head,

showing his spluttering lips, his insolent face, and with another
clang closed like the white-hot wink of an iron eye.

"Where's the blooming ship? Can you tell me? blast my eyes!
Under water -- or what? It's coming down here in tons. Are the

condemned cowls gone to Hades? Hey? Don't you know anything --
you jolly sailor-man you . . . ?"

Jukes, after a bewildered moment, had been helped by a roll to
dart through; and as soon as his eyes took in the comparative

vastness, peace and brilliance of the engine-room, the ship,
setting her stern heavily in the water, sent him charging head

down upon Mr. Rout.