hole, set as
no emergency of broken shaft or flying gear had ever seen it. Broken
shaft indeed! A man's life may be a broken shaft.

The woman and the girl came up the gangway, exidently to inspect
staterooms. The Quartermaster had rallied the Red Un back to the
line and stood before him, brandishing his broomhandle. Black fury
was in the boy's eye; hate had written herself on his soul. His
Chief had ignored his appeal--had left him to his degradation--had
deserted him.

The girl saw the line, started, blushed, recognised the Red Un--and
laughed!

IV

The great voyage began--began with the band playing and much waving
of flags and display of handkerchiefs; began with the girl and her
mother on board; began with the Chief eating his heart out over coal
and oil vouchers and well soundings and other things; began with the
Red Un in a new celluloid collar, lying awake at night to hate his
master, adding up his injury each day to greater magnitude.

The voyage began. The gong rang from the bridge. Stand By! said the
twin dials. Half Ahead! Full Ahead! Full Ahead! Man's wits once more
against the upreaching of the sea! The Chief, who knew that
somewhere above was his woman and her child, which was not his,
stood under a ventilator and said the few devout words with which he
commenced each voyage:

"With Thy help!" And then, snapping his watch: "Three minutes past
ten!"

The chief engineer of a liner is always a gentleman and frequently a
Christian. He knows, you see, how much his engines can do and how
little. It is not his engines alone that conquer the sea, nor his
engines plus his own mother wit. It is engines plus wit plus _x_,
and the _x_ is God's mercy. Being responsible for two quantities out
of the three of the equation, he prays--if he does--with an eye on a
gauge and an ear open for a cylinder knock.

There was gossip in the engineers' mess those next days: the Old Man
was going to pieces. A man could stand so many years of the strain
and then where was he? In a land berth, growing fat and paunchy, and
eating his heart out for the sea, or---- The sea got him one way or
another!

The Senior Second stood out for the Chief.

"Wrong with him? There's nothing wrong with him," he declared. "If
he was any more on the job than he is I'd resign. He's on the job
twenty-four hours a day, nights included."

There was a laugh at this; the mess was on to the game. Most of them
were playing it.

So now we have