d no help. They ran their fingers hopelessly into
the cracks of the starboard supporting-column, and picked at the ends
of the ropes round the shores, while Mr. Wardrop's voice rose and fell
echoing, till the quick tropic night closed down over the engine-room
skylight.

Next morning the work of reconstruction began. It has been explained
that the foot of the connecting-rod was forced against the foot of the
starboard supporting-column, which it had cracked through and driven
outward towards the ship's skin. To all appearance the job was more than
hopeless, for rod and column seemed to have been welded into one. But
herein Providence smiled on them for one moment to hearten them
through the weary weeks ahead. The second engineer--more reckless than
resourceful--struck at random with a cold chisel into the cast-iron
of the column, and a greasy, grey flake of metal flew from under the
imprisoned foot of the connecting-rod, while the rod itself fell away
slowly, and brought up with a thunderous clang somewhere in the dark
of the crank-pit. The guides-plates above were still jammed fast in the
guides, but the first blow had been struck. They spent the rest of the
day grooming the donkey-engine, which stood immediately forward of the
engine-room hatch. Its tarpaulin, of course, had been stolen, and eight
warm months had not improved the working parts. Further, the last dying
hiccup of the Haliotis seemed--or it might have been the Malay from the
boat-house--to have lifted the thing bodily on its bolts, and set it
down inaccurately as regarded its steam connections.

"If we only had one single cargo-derrick!" Mr. Wardrop sighed. "We can
take the cylinder-cover off by hand, if we sweat; but to get the rod
out o' the piston's not possible unless we use steam. Well, there'll be
steam the morn, if there's nothing else. She'll fizzle!"

Next morning men from the shore saw the Haliotis through a cloud, for it
was as though the deck smoked. Her crew were chasing steam through the
shaken and leaky pipes to its work in the forward donkey-engine; and
where oakum failed to plug a crack, they stripped off their loin-cloths
for lapping, and swore, half-boiled and mother-naked. The donkey-engine
worked--at a price--the price of constant attention and furious
stoking--worked long enough to allow a wire-rope (it was made up of a
funnel and a foremast-stay) to be led into the engine-room and made fast
on the cylinder-cover of the forward en