rd at the little wheel.

"Gone crazy," began the Captain's voice suddenly in the tube. "Rushed at
me. . . . Just now. Had to knock him down. . . . This minute. You heard,
Mr. Rout?"

"The devil!" muttered Mr. Rout. "Look out, Beale!"

His shout rang out like the blast of a warning trumpet, between the iron
walls of the engine-room. Painted white, they rose high into the dusk of
the skylight, sloping like a roof; and the whole lofty space resembled
the interior of a monument, divided by floors of iron grating, with
lights flickering at different levels, and a mass of gloom lingering in
the middle, within the columnar stir of machinery under the motionless
swelling of the cylinders. A loud and wild resonance, made up of all the
noises of the hurricane, dwelt in the still warmth of the air. There was
in it the smell of hot metal, of oil, and a slight mist of steam. The
blows of the sea seemed to traverse it in an unringing, stunning shock,
from side to side.

Gleams, like pale long flames, trembled upon the polish of metal; from
the flooring below the enormous crank-heads emerged in their turns
with a flash of brass and steel--going over; while the connecting-rods,
big-jointed, like skeleton limbs, seemed to thrust them down and pull
them up again with an irresistible precision. And deep in the half-light
other rods dodged deliberately to and fro, crossheads nodded, discs
of metal rubbed smoothly against each other, slow and gentle, in a
commingling of shadows and gleams.

Sometimes all those powerful and unerring movements would slow down
simultaneously, as if they had been the functions of a living organism,
stricken suddenly by the blight of languor; and Mr. Rout's eyes would
blaze darker in his long sallow face. He was fighting this fight in a
pair of carpet slippers. A short shiny jacket barely covered his loins,
and his white wrists protruded far out of the tight sleeves, as though
the emergency had added to his stature, had lengthened his limbs,
augmented his pallor, hollowed his eyes.

He moved, climbing high up, disappearing low down, with a restless,
purposeful industry, and when he stood still, holding the guard-rail in
front of the starting-gear, he would keep glancing to the right at the
steam-gauge, at the water-gauge, fixed upon the white wall in the light
of a swaying lamp. The mouths of two speaking-tubes gaped stupidly at his
elbow, and the dial of the engine-room telegraph resembled a clock of
lar