drank a glass of water, and
sat down for ten minutes or so to calm himself. Then he got out of his
chest a small bull's-eye lantern of his own and lit it.

Almost opposite his berth, across the narrow passage under the bridge,
there was, in the iron deck-structure covering the stokehold fiddle and
the boiler-space, a storeroom with iron sides, iron roof, iron-plated
floor, too, on account of the heat below. All sorts of rubbish was shot
there: it had a mound of scrap-iron in a corner; rows of empty oil-cans;
sacks of cotton-waste, with a heap of charcoal, a deck-forge, fragments
of an old hencoop, winch-covers all in rags, remnants of lamps, and a
brown felt hat, discarded by a man dead now (of a fever on the Brazil
coast), who had been once mate of the Sofala, had remained for years
jammed forcibly behind a length of burst copper pipe, flung at some
time or other out of the engine-room. A complete and imperious blackness
pervaded that Capharnaum of forgotten things. A small shaft of light
from Mr. Massy's bull's-eye fell slanting right through it.

His coat was unbuttoned; he shot the bolt of the door (there was no
other opening), and, squatting before the scrap-heap, began to pack his
pockets with pieces of iron. He packed them carefully, as if the rusty
nuts, the broken bolts, the links of cargo chain, had been so much gold
he had that one chance to carry away. He packed his side-pockets till
they bulged, the breast pocket, the pockets inside. He turned over the
pieces. Some he rejected. A small mist of powdered rust began to rise
about his busy hands. Mr. Massy knew something of the scientific basis
of his clever trick. If you want to deflect the magnetic needle of a
ship's compass, soft iron is the best; likewise many small pieces in
the pockets of a jacket would have more effect than a few large ones,
because in that way you obtain a greater amount of surface for weight in
your iron, and it's surface that tells.

He slipped out swiftly--two strides sufficed--and in his cabin he
perceived that his hands were all red--red with rust. It disconcerted
him, as though he had found them covered with blood: he looked himself
over hastily. Why, his trowsers too! He had been rubbing his rusty palms
on his legs.

He tore off the waistband button in his haste, brushed his coat, washed
his hands. Then the air of guilt left him, and he sat down to wait.

He sat bolt upright and weighted with iron in his chair. He had a hard,