men are wan and haggard from the killing heat and foul
air. In the engine-room in these latitudes the thermometer ranges from
rarely under 108 degrees up to 130, and one has to stay down there only
an hour, as I often have, until he is streaming with sweat as if he
were in the unholiest heat of a Turkish bath. And as the burning
bunker immediately adjoins the other end of the boiler room, to the
heat of its own smouldering mass is added that of the fire boxes, until
the temperature is probably close to 140 degrees.

While the fire is confined to the bunker where it started, we are in no
particular danger; but if it reaches the bunker immediately above, it
will have a free run to the after hold, where several thousand packages
of case oil are stored. In the open waist above the oil are a score or
more big tanks of gasoline, and, on the poop immediately aft of that, a
quantity of dynamite and several thousand detonating caps. Thus if the
fire ever gets aft, things are apt to happen a trifle quicker than they
can be dodged.

To denizens of _terra firma_, the mere thought of being aboard a ship
on fire in mid-sea--we are now five hundred miles from the little
British island of Ascension and one thousand and eighty off the Congo
(mainland) Coast--is nothing short of appalling. But here with us, in
actual experience, it is taken by the officers of the ship as such a
simple matter of course, in so far as they show or will admit, that we
are even denied the privilege of a mild thrill of excitement.

In the meantime there is nothing for the Doctor and myself to do but
sit about and guess whether it is to be a boost from the explosives, a
simple grill, a descent to Davy Jones, an adventure while athirst and
hungering in an open boat on the tossing South Atlantic, a successful
run of the ship to the nearest land--or victory over the fire. I
wonder which it will be!

If the worst comes to the worst, I intend to do for these pages what no
one these last three weeks has done for me--commit them to a bottle, if
I can find one aboard this ship, which is by no means certain. Indeed
it is so uncertain I think I had best start hunting one right now.

After nearly a twenty-four hours' search I've got it--a craft to bear
these sheets, wide of hatch, generously broad and deep of hull, but
destitute of aught of the stimulating aroma I had hoped might cheer
them on their voyage--more than I have been cheered on mine. For the
be