the Red Un looking for revenge and in idle moments
lurking about the decks where the girl played. He washed his neck
under his collar those days.

And we have the Chief fretting over his engines, subduing drunken
stokers, quelling the frequent disturbances of Hell Alley, which led
to the firemen's quarters, eating little and smoking much, devising
out of his mental disquietude a hundred possible emergencies
and--keeping away from the passengers. The Junior Second took down
the two parties who came to see the engine room and gave them
lemonade when they came up. The little girl's mother came with the
second party and neither squealed nor asked questions--only at the
door into the stokeholes she stood a moment with dilated eyes. She
was a little woman, still slim, rather tragic. She laid a hand on
the Junior's arm.

"The--the engineers do not go in there, do they?"

"Yes, madam. We stand four-hour watches. That is the Senior Second
Engineer on that pile of cinders."

The Senior Second was entirely black, except for his teeth and the
whites of his eyes. There was a little trouble in a coalbunker;
they had just discovered it. There would be no visitors after this
until the trouble was over.

The girl's mother said nothing more. The Junior Second led them
around, helping a pretty young woman about and explaining to her.

"This," he said, smiling at the girl, "is a pump the men have
nicknamed Marguerite, because she takes most of one man's time and
is always giving trouble."

The young woman tossed her head.

"Perhaps she would do better if she were left alone," she suggested.

The girl's mother said nothing, but, before she left, she took one
long look about the engine room. In some such bedlam of noise and
heat _he_ spent his life. She was wrong, of course, to pity him; one
need not measure labour by its conditions or by its cost, but by the
joy of achievement. The woman saw the engines--sinister, menacing,
frightful; the man saw power that answered to his hand--conquest,
victory. The beat that was uproar to her ears was as the throbbing
of his own heart.

It was after they had gone that the Chief emerged from the forward
stokehole where the trouble was. He had not seen her; she would not
have known him, probably, had they met face to face. He was quite
black and the light of battle gleamed in his eyes.

They fixed the trouble somehow. It was fire in a coalbunker, one of
the minor exigencies. Fire requiring