Page:Century Magazine v069 (centuryillustrat69holl).pdf/389

yuh don't know about a fire 's enough to keep yuh from tryin' lo play tricks wih one—er it ought to be."

Moore stared at him stupidly.

"Yuh 're goin' to get yer fingers burned now. An' it serves yuh —— well right."

Moore turned away from him in a daze, and stumbled out to the engine-room; and Captain Keighley, having watched him go, proceeded to examine the shaft-tunnel at his leisure. He found nothing but a ball of cotton waste, which he stuffed into his pocket. Then he leaned back calmly and waited for his crew to return.

They were standing in the thickening smoke of the engine-room, waiting for nothing with the quietness of disgusted despair. Sparks were beginning to fall through the gratings. Little splashes of hot water sprinkled down on them. They looked up at the reflection of the flames that were purring overhead. They spoke in low voices to one another, and every now and then a man who had gone forward toward the stoke-hole or been down on his face crawling below the machinery came back to them from a vain attempt to find a safer spot, and made a gesture of despair. A young German stoker was biting his lips and whining like a frightened animal. No one spoke to Moore.

The last slow pulse of the engines stopped, the electric lights died out, and the glare of the fire reddened the shining metal of columns, cylinders, and piston-rods. No one moved. They watched, as if fascinated, the approach of this blind horror that seemed to be fighting its way down to them through the bars of the gratings, snarling.

At last an engineer joined them with a lamp from the stoke-hole, and they followed him irresolutely back to the dark shaft-tunnel. He passed them all through, and slid over the steel door until there was only a narrow aperture left unclosed. He squeezed himself through that slit, and then with hammer and chisel drove the door home until the opening was merely a crack wide enough to admit the finger-ends. They plugged that crack with their coats and woolen shirts. He put the lamp on top of a shaft-bearing. They sat down on the floor of the tunnel, with their backs against the plates of the after hold. Captain Keighley stood beside the shaft.

"Don't do that," he said to one of the firemen who had begun to strip. "Yuh 'll want all yuh can get between you an' the metal as soon 's that after cargo gets goin'."

The man grumbled: "We 'll be sittin' on top of a red-hot stove in a minute."

Captain Keighley replied: "Yuh can go outside an' sit in one, if yuh want to."

Lieutenant Moore took a quivering breath through dry nostrils, and shut his teeth on the trembling of his jaws. He could hear a low murmur from the fire that was roaring above them. The little lamp flared dully on the bearing. For the rest, there was nothing but darkness and silence and the heat that choked.

"Well?" Captain Keighley said.

No one answered.

"I guess yuh got what yuh been workin' fer, ain't yuh? Yuh got me into trouble. Yuh been tryin' hard enough to push me into a hole ever since I broke Doherty."