flaring in the draught from the stokehold door. Then he
abruptly abandoned his search for vitriolic language and rushed into the
store for a piece of brass rod. It was a curious performance. I was
impressed. I realized in a dim way that there was no longer a hardware
shop round the corner. The making of those screws was nothing in itself,
but it was the principle behind it, the principle of never being
stumped. And these rough, uncultured, north-countrymen were my teachers.
The Chief fixed me with his one good eye at lunch. 'We don't get things
from ashore in this employ,' he observed, and left me to soak it in.

"I suppose I ought to have been downhearted at being so ignorant and
dirty and tired, but I wasn't in the least. It was too interesting.
There was a grim irony, to me, in the appalling contrast between the
behaviour of that worn-out dynamo and the smug theory in the text-books
and trade catalogues I had been used to so long. I had read of the way
to detect faults in a circuit, but it seemed to me there was no need to
look for faults on the _Corydon_; it was the virtues, the sound places,
that needed looking for. And yet, strange to say, out of her decrepitude
loyalty was born. I found it growing on me day by day, a jealous regard
for her, the pity that becomes a sort of cantankerous affection.

"But to go on with that day, we crossed the bar. It was high water at
four in the afternoon and I had to go down again to stand by the
telegraph. With my head against the reversing engine wheel I could feel
the slow vibration of the anchor coming up, and hear the sough of the
exhaust coming back from the windlass. The Second and old Croasan stood
near by, their faces blank with waiting and fatigue, like the faces of
dead men. Old Croasan's eyelid would flicker now and then and the tip of
his tongue would move stealthily round the inside of his lips. He hadn't
shaved for several days and his face was vague and venerable, glistening
grey bristles. When he leaned gently against the vice-bench and folding
his arms, closed his eyes, he looked like a hundred-years'-old corpse.
He closed his eyes. It was not interesting to him, this crossing of the
bar.

"Suddenly we got an order, and we started. I went along the tunnel to
see the bearings were all oiled, and while I stood in the dark gloom at
the far end, with my hand on the dribbling stern-gland, there came a
sudden thump and a grinding shock. The turning shaft shook and ch