tiated will be a sufficient allusion--might not E. A. Poe, to-day,
have set a story to rival the _Cask of Amontillado_? I suggested it to
the chief, but he saw no adventurous, unusual quality in his tunnel. Right
aft appeared a long vertical ladder, ascending to a manhole--a safety
appliance, he explained it, of the war, but to me it resembled a danger
appliance.

Having gone as far as we could, we turned back to the engine-room. I was
now accustomed enough to notice that the sultry air of the place was
occasionally tempered by a draught of the cooler kind. But I found it hard
to realize how man could tolerate surroundings so trying as these in
order to earn a wage which in a comfortable employment would be nothing
out of the way. I pictured myself as an engineer on a steamer. I feared
that, in time, the approach of each watch of four hours down among the
machinery, fume, sweat and thunder would become a formidable problem.
"Use" no doubt explained the nonchalance of pallid Williams as he groped
with his slush-lamp to his work. But I thought of the war, when, after
a while, useful "use" began to desert the soldier and to leave him on
tenterhooks worse than the apprehensions of the unused.

We were climbing upstairs again--up from the underworld of battle
headquarters?

I had appreciated the handful of cotton waste which the chief had given
me at the first: and now went off to read poems. The man to whom this
"divelish yron yngine"--if I do not misquote Spenser--is given for control
(and is controlled), returned to his outstanding labour--that of filing
part of a curious patent electric torch which the captain had asked him to
restore to life.

VII

The _Bonadventure_ entered the tropics, calm, hot, blue expanse. I do
not know why, but our passing into that zone was for me contemporary
with an access of wild and vivid dreams. These were odd enough to cause
me to record what remained of them in the morning, and as they still seem
prominent in my recollections of my sea-going, I make a note of some of
them. Now, it was no other than the great Lord Byron, pursuing me with a
knife, applauded by two ladies. The basis of actuality, at least, was
there. Now I was taking my way along weedy rivers, which at first
were the innocent shallow streams I once met and knew in Kent. But as the
dream progressed a Byronic change came over it; and these streams grew
more and more foul with weeds and grotesque in stagnation, unt