The Day's Work

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lie in the face of the sea, or mislead a tempest ; but, as
lawyers have discovered, he makes up for chances
withheld when he returns to shore, an affidavit in
either hand.

The Aglaia figured with distinction in the great
Mackinaw salvage-case. It was her first slip from vir-
tue, and she learned how to change her name, but not
her heart, and to run across the sea. As the Guiding
Light she was very badly wanted in a South American
port for the little matter of entering harbour at full
speed, colliding with a coal-hulk and the State's only
man-of-war, just as that man-of-war was going to coal.
She put to sea without explanations, though three forts
fired at her for half an hour. As the Julia M'Gregor
she had been concerned in picking up from a raft cer-
tain gentlemen who should have stayed in Noumea, but
who preferred making themselves vastly unpleasant to
authority in quite another quarter of the world ; and as
the Shah-in- Shah she had been overtaken on the high
seas, indecently full of munitions of war, by the cruiser
of an agitated Power at issue with its neighbour. That
time she was very nearly sunk, and her riddled hull
gave eminent lawyers of two countries great profit.
After a season she reappeared as the Martin Hunt,
painted a dull slate colour, with pure saffron funnel,
and boats of robin 's-egg blue, engaging in the Odessa
trade till she was invited (and the invitation could not
well be disregarded) to keep away from Black Sea
ports altogether.

She had ridden through many waves of depression.
Freights might drop out of sight, Seamen's Unions
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throw spanners and nuts at certificated masters, or
stevedores combine till cargo perished on the dock-
head; but the boat of many names came and went,
busy, alert, and inconspicuous always. Her skipper
made no complaint of hard times, and port officers ob-
served that her crew signed and signed again with the
regularity of Atlantic liner boatswains. Her name
she changed as occasion called; her well-paid crew
never; and a large percentage of the profits of her voy-
ages was spent with an open hand on her engine-room.
She never troubled the underwriters, and very seldom
stopped to talk with a signal-station, for her business
was urgent and private.

But an end came to her tradings, and she perished in
this manner. Deep peace brooded over Europe, Asia,
Africa, America, Australasia, and Polynesia. The
Powers dealt together more or less honestly; banks
paid their depositors to the hour; diamonds of price
came safely to the hands of their owners; Republics
rested content with their Dictators; diplomats found
no one whose presence in the least incommoded them;
moiiarchs lived openly with their lawfully wedded
wives. It was as though the whole earth had put on
its best Sunday bib and tucker ; and business was very
bad for the Martin Hunt. The great, virtuous calm
engulfed her, slate sides, yellow funnel, and all, but
cast up in another hemisphere the steam whaler Hali-
otis, black and rusty, with a manure-coloured funnel,
a litter of dingy white boats, and an enormous stove,
or furnace, for boiling blubber on her forward well-
deck. There could be no doubt that her trip was sue-
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

cessful, for she lay at several ports not too well
known, and the smoke of her trying-out insulted the
beaches.

Anon she departed, at the speed of the average
London four-wheeler, and entered a semi-inland sea,
warm, still, and blue, which is, perhaps, the most
strictly preserved water in the world. There she stayed
for a certain time, and the great stars of those mild skies
beheld her playing puss-in-the-corner among islands
where whales are never found. All that while she
smelt abominably, and the smell, though fishy, was not
whalesome. One evening calamity descended upon her
from the island of Pygang-Watai, and she fled, while her
crew jeered at a fat black-and-brown gunboat puffing
far behind. They knew to the last revolution the capa-
city of every boat, on those seas, that they were anxious
to avoid. A British ship with a good conscience does
not, as a rule, flee from the man-of-war of a foreign
Power, and it is also considered a breach of etiquette to
stop and search British ships at sea. These things the
skipper of the Haliotis did not pause to prove, but held
on at an inspiriting eleven knots an hour till nightfall.
One thing only he overlooked.

The Power that kept an expensive steam-patrol mov-
ing up and down those waters (they had dodged the two
regular ships of the station with an ease that bred con-
tempt) had newly brought up a third and a fourteen-
knot boat with a clean bottom to help the work; and
that was why the Haliotis, driving hard from the east
to the west, found herself at daylight in such a position
that she could not help seeing an arrangement of four
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

flags, a mile and a-half behind, which read: " Heave to,
or take the consequences! "

She had her choice, and she took it. The end came
when, presuming on her lighter draught, she tried to
draw away northward over a friendly shoal. The shell
that arrived by way of the Chief Engineer's cabin was
some five inches in diameter, with a practice, not a
bursting, charge. It had been intended to cross her
bows, and that was why it knocked the framed por-
trait of the Chief Engineer's wife— and she was a very
pretty girl— on to the floor, splintered his wash-hand
stand, crossed the alleyway into the engine-room, and
striking on a grating, dropped directly in front of the
forward engine, where it burst, neatly fracturing both
the bolts that held the connecting-rod to the forward
crank.

What follows is worth consideration. The forward
engine had no more work to do. Its released piston-rod,
therefore, drove up fiercely, with nothing to check it,
and started most of the nuts of the cylinder-cover. It
came down again, the full weight of the steam behind
it, and the foot of the disconnected connecting-rod,
useless as the leg of a man with a sprained ankle,
flung out to the right and struck the starboard, or
right-hand, cast-iron supporting-column of the forward
engine, cracking it clean through about six inches
above the base, and wedging the upper portion out-
wards three inches towards the ship's side. There the
connecting-rod jammed. Meantime, the after-engine,
being as yet unembarrassed, went on with its work,
and in so doing brought round at its next revolution
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the crank of the forward engine, which smote the al-
ready jammed connecting-rod, bending it and there-
with the piston-rod cross-head— the big cross-piece that
slides up and down so smoothly.

The cross-head jammed sideways in the guides, and,
in addition to putting further pressure on the already
broken starboard supporting-column, cracked the port,
or left-hand, supporting-column in two or three places.
There being nothing more that could be made to move,
the engines brought up, all standing, with a hiccup
that seemed to lift the Haliotis a foot out of the water;
and the engine-room staff, opening every steam outlet
that they could find in the confusion, arrived on deck
somewhat scalded, but calm. There was a sound below
of things happening— a rushing, clicking, purring,
grunting, rattling noise that did not last for more than
a minute. It was the machinery adjusting itself, on
the spur of the moment, to a hundred altered conditions.
Mr. Wardrop, one foot on the upper grating, inclined
his ear sideways, and groaned. You cannot stop en-
gines working at twelve knots an hour in three seconds
without disorganising them. The Haliotis slid forward
in a cloud of steam, shrieking like a wounded horse.
There was nothing more to do. The five-inch shell
with a reduced charge had settled the situation. And
when you are full, all three holds, of strictly preserved
pearls; when you have cleaned out the Tanna Bank,
the Sea-Horse Bank, and four other banks from one end
to the other of the Amanala Sea— when you have ripped
out the very heart of a rich Government monopoly so
that five years will not repair your wrong-doings— you
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

must smile and take what is in store. But the skipper
reflected, as a launch put out from the man-of-war,
that he had been bombarded on the high seas, with
the British flag— several of them— picturesquely dis-
posed above him, and tried to find comfort from the
thought.

" Where," said the stolid naval lieutenant hoisting
himself aboard, " where are those dam' pearls? "

They were there beyond evasion. No affidavit could
do away with the fearful smell of decayed oysters, the
diving-dresses, and the shell-littered hatches. They
were there to the value of seventy thousand pounds,
more or less ; and every pound poached.

The man-of-war was annoyed; for she had used up
many tons of coal, she had strained her tubes, and,
worse than all, her officers and crew had been hurried.
Every one on the Haliotis was arrested and rearrested
several times, as each officer came aboard; then they
were told by what they esteemed to be the equivalent
of: a midshipman that they were to consider themselves
prisoners, and finally were put under arrest.

" It 's not the least good," said the skipper, suavely.
" You 'd much better send us a tow—"

" Be still— you are arrest! " was the reply.

*' Where the devil do you expect we are going to
escape to? We 're helpless. You 've got to tow us into
somewhere, and explain why you fired on us. Mr.
Wardrop, we 're helpless, are n't we? "

" Kuined from end to end," said the man of machi-
nery. " If she rolls, the forward cylinder will come
down and go through her bottom. Both columns are
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

clean cut through. There 's nothing to hold any-
thing up."

The council of war clanked off to see if Mr. Wardrop's
words were true. He warned them that it was as much
as a man's life was worth to enter the engine-room, and
they contented themselves with a distant inspection
through the thinning steam. The Haliotis lifted to the
long, easy swell, and the starboard supporting-column
ground a trifle, as a man grits his teeth under the knife.
The forward cylinder was depending on that unknown
force men call the pertinacity of materials, which now
and then balances that other heartbreaking power, the
perversity of inanimate things.

" You see! " said Mr. Wardrop, hurrying them away,
"The engines are n't worth their price as old iron."

" We tow," was the answer. " Afterwards we shall
confiscate."

The man-of-war was short-handed, and did not see
the necessity for putting a prize-crew aboard the
Haliotis. So she sent one sublieutenant, whom the
skipper kept very drunk, for he did not wish to make
the tow too easy, and, moreover, he had an inconspicu-
ous little rope hanging from the stern of his ship.

Then they began to tow at an average speed of four
knots an hour. The Haliotis was very hard to move,
and the gunnery-lieutenant, who had fired the five-inch
shell, had leisure to think upon consequences. Mr.
Wardrop was the busy man. He borrowed all the crew
to shore up the cylinders with spars and blocks from
the bottom and sides of the ship. It was a day's risky
work; but anything was better than drowning at the
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

end of a tow-rope; and if the forward cylinder had
fallen, it would have made its way to the sea-bed, and
taken the Haliotis after.

" Where are we going to, and how long will they tow
us? " he asked of the skipper.

"God knows! and this prize lieutenant 's drunk.
What do you think you can do?"

" There 's just the bare chance," Mr. Wardrop whis-
pered, though no one was within hearing— " there 's
just the bare chance o' repairin' her, if a man knew
how. They 've twisted the very guts out of her,
bringing her up with that jerk; but I 'm saying that,
with time and patience, there 's just the chance o'
making steam yet. We could do it. "

The skipper's eye brightened. " Do you mean," he
began, " that she is any good? "

" Oh, no," said Mr. Wardrop. " She '11 need three
thousand pounds in repairs, at the lowest, if she 's to
take the sea again, an' that apart from any injury to
her structure. She 's like a man fallen down five pair
o' stairs. We can't tell for months what has happened ;
but we know she '11 never be good again without a new
inside. Ye should see the condenser-tubes an' the
steam connections to the donkey, for two things only.
I 'm not afraid of them repairin' her. I 'm afraid of
them stealin' things."

" They 've fired on us. They '11 have to explain
that."

" Our reputation 's not good enough to ask for ex-
planations. Let 's take what we have and be thankful.
Ye would not have consuls rememberin' the Guidin-
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

Light an' the Shah-in-Shah, and the Aglaia, at this
most alarmin' crisis. We 've been no better than
pirates these ten years. Under Providence we 're no
worse than thieves now. We 've much to be thankful
for— if we e'er get back to her."

4 * Make it your own way, then, ' ' said the skipper. ' ' If
there 's the least chance—"

"I '11 leave none," said Mr. Wardrop— u none that
they '11 dare to take. Keep her heavy on the tow, for
we need time."

The skipper never interfered with the affairs of the
engine-room, and Mr. Wardrop— an artist in his profes-
sion—turned to and composed a work terrible and for-
bidding. His background was the dark-grained sides
of the engine-room; his material the metals of power
and strength, helped out with spars, baulks, and ropes.
The man-of-war towed sullenly and viciously. The
Haliotis behind her hummed like a hive before swarm-
ing. With extra and totally unneeded spars her crew
blocked up the space round the forward engine till it
resembled a statue in its scaffolding, and the butts of
the shores interfered with every view that a dispassion-
ate eye might wish to take. And that the dispassionate
mind might be swiftly shaken out of its calm, the well-
sunk bolts of the shores were wrapped round untidily
with loose ends of ropes, giving a studied effect of most
dangerous insecurity. Next, Mr. Wardrop took up a
collection from the after engine, which, as you will
remember, had not been affected in the general wreck.
The cylinder escape-valve he abolished with a flogging-
hammer. It is difficult in far-off ports to come by such
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

valves, unless, like Mr. Wardrop, you keep duplicates in
store. At the same time men took off the nuts of two
of the great holding-down bolts that serve to keep the
engines in place on their solid bed. An engine violently
arrested in mid-career may easily jerk off the nut of
a holding-down bolt, and this accident looked very
natural.

Passing along the tunnel, he removed several shaft
coupling-bolts and -nuts, scattering other and ancient
pieces of iron underfoot. Cylinder-bolts he cut off to
the number of six from the after engine cylinder, so
that it might match its neighbour, and stuffed the bilge-
and feed-pumps with cotton- waste. Then he made up
a neat bundle of the various odds and ends that he had
gathered from the engines— little things like nuts and
valve-spindles, all carefully tallowed— and retired with
them under the floor of the engine-room, where he
sighed, being fat, as he passed from manhole to man-
hole of the double bottom, and in a fairly dry submarine
compartment hid them. Any engineer, particularly in
an unfriendly port, has a right to keep his spare stores
where he chooses; and the foot of one of the cylinder
shores blocked all entrance into the regular store-room,
even if that had not been already closed with steel
wedges. In conclusion, he disconnected the after
engine, laid piston and connecting-rod, carefully tal-
lowed, where it would be most inconvenient to the
casual visitor, took out three of the eight collars of the
thrust-block, hid them where only he could find them
again, filled the boilers by hand, wedged the sliding
doors of the coal-bunkers, and rested from his labours.
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

The engine-room was a cemetery, and it did not need
the contents of the ash-lift through the skylight to
make it any worse.

He invited the skipper to look at the completed work.

" Saw ye ever such a forsaken wreck as that? " said
he proudly. " It almost frights me to go under those
shores. Now, what d' you think they '11 do to us? "

" Wait till we see," said the skipper. "It '11 be bad
enough when it comes."

He was not wrong. The pleasant days of towing
ended all too soon, though the Haliotis trailed behind
her a heavily weighted jib stayed out into the shape of
a pocket; and Mr. Wardrop was no longer an artist of
imagination, but one of seven-and-twenty prisoners in a
prison full of insects. The man-of-war had towed them
to the nearest port, not to the headquarters of the
colony, and when Mr. Wardrop saw the dismal little
harbour, with its ragged line of Chinese junks, its one
crazy tug, and the boat-building shed that, under the
charge of a philosophical Malay, represented a dock-
yard, he sighed and shook his head.

"I did well," he said. "This is the habitation o'
wreckers an' thieves. We 're at the uttermost ends of
the earth. Think you they '11 ever know in England? "

"Does n't look like it," said the skipper.

They were marched ashore with what they stood up
in, under a generous escort, and were judged accord-
ing to the customs of the country, which, though excel-
lent, are a little out of date. There were the pearls;
there were the poachers ; and there sat a small but hot
Governor. He consulted for a while, and then things
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

began to move with speed, for he did not wish to keep
a hungry crew at large on the beach, and the man-of-
war had gone up the coast. With a wave of his hand—
a stroke of the pen was not necessary— he consigned
them to the blakgang-tana, the back-country, and the
hand of the Law removed them from his sight and the
knowledge of men. They were marched into the palms,
and the back-country swallowed them up— all the crew
of the Haliotis.

Deep peace continued to brood over Europe, Asia,
Africa, America, Australasia, and Polynesia.

**********

It was the firing that did it. They should have kept
their council ; but when a few thousand foreigners are
bursting with joy over the fact that a ship under the
British flag has been fired at on the high seas, news
travels quickly ; and when it came out that the pearl-
stealing crew had not been allowed access to their con-
sul (there was no consul within a few hundred miles of
that lonely port) even the friendliest of Powers has a
right to ask questions. The great heart of the British
public was beating furiously on account of the perform-
ance of a notorious race-horse, and had not a throb to
waste on distant accidents ; but somewhere deep in the
hull of the ship of State there is machinery which more
or less accurately takes charge of foreign affairs. That
machinery began to revolve, and who so shocked and
surprised as the Power that had captured the Haliotis ?
It explained that colonial governors and far-away men-
of-war were difficult to control, and promised that it
would most certainly make an example both of tho
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

Governor and the vessel. As for the crew reported to
be pressed into military service in tropical climes, it
would produce them as soon as possible, and it would
apologise, if necessary. Now, no apologies were
needed. When one nation apologises to another,
millions of amateurs who have no earthly concern
with the difficulty hurl themselves into the strife and
embarrass the trained specialist. It was requested
that the crew be found, if they were still alive— they
had been eight months beyond knowledge— and it was
promised that all would be forgotten.

The little Governor of the little port was pleased
with himself. Seven-and-twenty white men made a
very compact force to throw away on a war that had
neither beginning nor end— a jungle-and-stockade fight
that flickered and smouldered through the wet hot
years in the hills a hundred miles away, and was the
heritage of every wearied official. He had, he thought,
deserved well of his country; and if only some one
would buy the unhappy Haliotis, moored in the har-
bour below his verandah, his cup would be full. He
looked at the neatly silvered lamps that he had taken
from her cabins, and thought of much that might be
turned to account. But his countrymen in that moist
climate had no spirit. They would peep into the silent
engine-room, and shake their heads. Even the men-of-
war would not tow her further up the coast, where the
Governor believed that she could be repaired. She was
a bad bargain; but her cabin carpets were undeniably
beautiful, and his wife approved of her mirrors.

Three hours later cables were bursting round him like
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

shells, for, though he knew it not, he was being offered
as a sacrifice by the nether to the upper millstone, and
his superiors had no regard for his feelings. He had,
said the cables, grossly exceeded his power, and failed
to report on events. He would, therefore— at this he
cast himself back in his hammock— produce the crew
of the Haliotis. He would send for them, and, if that
failed, he would put his dignity on a pony and fetch
them himself. He had no conceivable right to make
pearl-poachers serve in any war. He would be held
responsible.

Next morning the cables wished to know whether he
had found the crew of the Haliotis. They were to be
found, freed and fed— he was to feed them— till such
time as they could be sent to the nearest English port
in a man-of-war. If you abuse a man long enough in
great words flashed over the sea-beds, things happen.
The Governor sent inland swiftly for his prisoners, who
were also soldiers; and never was a militia regiment
more anxious to reduce its strength. No power short
of death could make these mad men wear the uniform
of their service. They would not fight, except with
their fellows, and it was for that reason the regiment
had not gone to war, but stayed in a stockade, reason-
ing with the new troops. The autumn campaign had
been a fiasco, but here were the Englishmen. All the
regiment marched back to guard them, and the hairy
enemy, armed with blow-pipes, rejoiced in the forest.
Five of the crew had died, but there lined up on the
Governor's verandah two-and-twenty men marked
about the legs with the scars of leech-bites. A few of
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

them wore fringes that had once been trousers; the
others used loin-cloths of gay patterns; and they ex-
isted beautifully but simply in the Governor's veran-
dah, and when he came out they sang at him. When
you have lost seventy thousand pounds' worth of
pearls, your pay, your ship, and all your clothes, and
have lived in bondage for five months beyond the
faintest pretences of civilisation, you know what true
independence means, for you become the happiest of
created things— natural man.

The Governor told the crew that they were evil, and
they asked for food. When he saw how they ate, and
when he remembered that none of the pearl patrol-
boats were expected for two months, he sighed. But
the crew of the Haliotis lay down in the verandah, and
said that they were pensioners of the Governor's bounty.
A grey-bearded man, fat and bald-headed, his one gar-
ment a green-and-yellow loin-cloth, saw the Haliotis in
the harbour, and bellowed for joy. The men crowded
to the verandah-rail, kicking aside the long cane chairs.
They pointed, gesticulated, and argued freely, without
shame. The militia regiment sat down in the Gover-
nor's garden. The Governor retired to his hammock —
it was as easy to be killed lying as standing— and his
women squeaked from the shuttered rooms.

" She sold? " said the grey-bearded man, pointing to
the Haliotis. He was Mr. Wardrop.

"No good," said the Governor, shaking his head.
" No one come buy."

" He 's taken my lamps, though," said the skipper
He wore one leg of a pair of trousers, and his eye wan-
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

dered along the verandah. The Governor quailed.
There were cuddy camp-stools and the skipper's writ-
ing-table in plain sight.

" They 've cleaned her out, o' course," said Mr. War-
drop. " They would. We '11 go aboard and take an
inventory. See! " He waved his hands over the har-
bour. " We— live— there— now. Sorry?"

The Governor smiled a smile of relief.

" He 's glad of that," said one of the crew, reflec-
tively. "I should n't wonder."

They flocked down to the harbour-front, the militia
regiment clattering behind, and embarked themselves
in what they found— it happened to be the Governor's
boat. Then they disappeared over the bulwarks of the
Haliotis, and the Governor prayed that they might find
occupation inside.

Mr. Wardrop's first bound took him to the engine-
room; and when the others were patting the well-
remembered decks, they heard him giving God thanks
that things were as he had left them. The wrecked
engines stood over his head untouched; no inexpert
hand had meddled with his shores ; the steel wedges of
the store-room were rusted home; and, best of all, the
hundred and sixty tons of good Australian coal in the
bunkers had not diminished.

" I don't understand it," said Mr. Wardrop. " Any
Malay knows the use o' copper. They ought to have
cut away the pipes. And with Chinese junks coming
here, too. It 's a special interposition o' Provi-
dence."

"You think so," said the skipper, from above.
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" There 's only been one thief here, and he 's cleaned
her out of all my things, anyhow."

Here the skipper spoke less than the truth, for under
the planking of his cabin, only to be reached by a chisel,
lay a little money which never drew any interest— his
sheet-anchor to windward. It was all in clean sover-
eigns that pass current the world over, and might have
amounted to more than a hundred pounds.

"He 's left me alone. Let 's thank God," repeated
Mr. Wardrop.

"He 's taken everything else; look! "

The Haliotis, except as to her engine-room, had been
systematically and scientifically gutted from one end to
the other, and there was strong evidence that an un-
clean guard had camped in the skipper's cabin to regu-
late that plunder. She lacked glass, plate, crockery,
cutlery, mattresses, cuddy carpets and chairs, all boats,
and her copper ventilators. These things had been
removed, with her sails and as much of the wire rig-
ging as would not imperil the safety of the masts.

" He must have sold those," said the skipper. " The
other things are in his house, I suppose."

Every fitting that could be pried or screwed out was
gone. Port, starboard, and masthead lights ; teak grat-
ings; sliding sashes of the deck-house; the captain's
chest of drawers, with charts and chart-table; photo-
graphs, brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin doors;
rubber cuddy mats ; hatch-irons ; half the funnel-stays ;
cork fenders; carpenter's grindstone and tool-chest;
holystones, swabs, squeegees; all cabin and pantry
lamps; galley-fittings en bloc; flags and flag-locker;
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

clocks, chronometers; the forward compass and the
ship's bell and belfry, were among the missing.

There were great scarred marks on the deck-plank-
ing over which the cargo-derricks had been hauled.
One must have fallen by the way, for the bulwark-rails
were smashed and bent and the side-plates bruised.

"It 's the Governor," said the skipper. "He 's
been selling her on the instalment plan."

" Let 's go up with spanners and shovels, and kill 'em
all," shouted the crew. " Let 's drown him, and keep
the woman! "

" Then we '11 be shot by that black-and-tan regiment
—our regiment. What 's the trouble ashore? They 've
camped our regiment on the beach."

" We 're cut off, that 's all. Go and see what they
want," said Mr. Wardrop. " You 've the trousers."

In his simple way the Governor was a strategist.
He did not desire that the crew of the Haliotis should
come ashore again, either singly or in detachments,
and he proposed to turn their steamer into a convict-
hulk. They would wait— he explained this from the
quay to the skipper in the barge— and they would con-
tinue to wait till the man-of-war came along, exactly
where they were. If one of them set foot ashore, the
entire regiment would open fire, and he would not
scruple to use the two cannon of the town. Meantime
food would be sent daily in a boat under an armed
escort. The skipper, bare to the waist, and rowing,
could only grind his teeth ; and the Governor improved
the occasion, and revenged himself for the bitter words
in the cables, by saying what he thought of the morals
[175]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

and manners of the crew. The barge returned to the
Haliotis in silence, and the skipper climbed aboard,
white on the cheek-bones and blue about the nostrils.

"I knew it," said Mr. Wardrop; "and they won't
give us good food, either. We shall have bananas
morning, noon, and night, an' a man can't work on
fruit. We know that."

Then the skipper cursed Mr. Wardrop for importing
frivolous side-issues into the conversation ; and the crew
cursed one another, and the Haliotis, the voyage, and
all that they knew or could bring to mind. They sat
down in silence on the empty decks, and their eyes
burned in their heads. The green harbour water
chuckled at them overside. They looked at the palm-
fringed hills inland, at the white houses above the
harbour road, at the single tier of native craft by the
quay, at the stolid soldiery sitting round the two can-
non, and, last of all, at the blue bar of the horizon. Mr.
Wardrop was buried in thought, and scratched imaginary
lines with his untrimmed finger-nails on the planking.

" I make no promise," he said, at last, " for I can't
say what may or may not have happened to them. But
here 's the ship, and here 's us."

There was a little scornful laughter at this, and Mr.
Wardrop knitted his brows. He recalled that in the
days when he wore trousers he had been chief engineer
of the Haliotis.

" Harland, Mackesy, Noble, Hay, Naughton, Fink,
O'Hara, Trumbull."

"Here, sir!" The instinct of obedience waked to
answer the roll-call of the engine-room.
[176]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

"Below!"

They rose and went.

" Captain, I '11 trouble you for the rest of the men as
I want them. We '11 get my stores out, and clear away
the shores we don't need, and then we '11 patch her up.
My men will remember that they 're in the Haliotis,
—under me."

He went into the engine-room, and the others stared.
They were used to the accidents of the sea, but this
was beyond their experience. None who had seen the
engine-room believed that anything short of new engines
from end to end could stir the Haliotis from her moorings.

The engine-room stores were unearthed, and Mr.
War drop's face, red with the filth of the bilges and the
exertion of travelling on his stomach, lit with joy.
The spare gear of the Haliotis had been unusually com-
plete, and two-and-twenty men, armed with screw-
jacks, differential blocks, tackle, vices, and a forge or
so, can look Kismet between the eyes without wink-
ing. The crew were ordered to replace the holding-
down and shaft-bearing bolts, and return the collars of
the thrust-block. When they had finished, Mr. Wardrop
delivered a lecture on repairing compound engines
without the aid of the shops, and the men sat about on
the cold machinery. The cross-head jammed in the
guides leered at them drunkenly, but offered 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.
[177]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

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 sup-
porting-column, which it had cracked through and
driven outward towards the ship's skin. To all appear-
ance 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 pis-
ton 's not possible unless we use steam. Well, there '11
be steam the morn, if there 's nothing else. She '11 fizzle !
[178]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

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 stok-
ing—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 engine. That rose easily enough, and was
hauled through the skylight and on to the deck, many
hands assisting the doubtful steam. Then came the
tug of war, for it was necessary to get to the piston and
the jammed piston-rod. They removed two of the pis-
ton junk-ring studs, screwed in two strong iron eye-
bolts by way of handles, doubled the wire rope, and set
half a dozen men to smite with an extemporised batter-
ing-ram at the end of the piston-rod, where it peered
through the piston, while the donkey-engine hauled
upwards on the piston itself. After four hours of this
furious work, the piston-rod suddenly slipped, and the
piston rose with a jerk, knocking one or two men over
into the engine-room. But when Mr. Wardrop declared
that the piston had not split, they cheered, and thought
nothing of their wounds; and the donkey-engine was
hastily stopped ; its boiler was no thing to tamper with.

And day by day their supplies reached them by boat.
The skipper humbled himself once more before the
Governor, and as a concession had leave to get drink-
[179]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

ing water from the Malay boat-builder on the quay. It
was not good drinking water, but the Malay was anx-
ious to supply anything in his power, if he were paid
for it.

Now when the jaws of the forward engine stood, as
it were, stripped and empty, they began to wedge up
the shores of the cylinder itself. That work alone filled
the better part of three days— warm and sticky days,
when the hands slipped and sweat ran into the eyes.
When the last wedge was hammered home there was
no longer an ounce of weight on the supporting-col-
umns; and Mr. Wardrop rummaged the ship for boiler-
plate three-quarters of an inch thick, where he could
find it. There was not much available, but what there
was was more than beaten gold to him. In one des-
perate forenoon the entire crew, naked and lean, haled
back, more or less into place, the starboard supporting-
column, which, as you remember, was cracked clean
through. Mr. Wardrop found them asleep where they
had finished the work, and gave them a day's rest,
smiling upon them as a father while he drew chalk-
marks about the cracks. They woke to new and more
trying labour ; for over each one of those cracks a plate
of three-quarter-inch boiler-iron was to be worked hot,
the rivet-holes being drilled by hand. All that time
they were fed on fruits, chiefly bananas, with some
sago.

Those were the days when men swooned over the

ratchet-drill and the hand-forge, and where they fell

they had leave to lie unless their bodies were in the way

of their fellows' feet. And so, patch upon patch, and a

[180]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

patch over all, the starboard supporting-column was
clouted ; but when they thought all was secure, Mr.
Wardrop decreed that the noble patchwork would never
support working engines; at the best, it could only
hold the guide-bars approximately true. The dead
weight of the cylinders must be borne by vertical struts ;
and, therefore, a gang would repair to the bows, and
take out, with files, the big bow-anchor davits, each of
which was some three inches in diameter. They threw
hot coals at Wardrop, and threatened to kill him, those
who did not weep (they were ready to weep on the least
provocation) ; but he hit them with iron bars heated at
the end, and they limped forward, and the davits came
with them when they returned. They slept sixteen
hours on the strength of it, and in three days two
struts were in place, bolted from the foot of the star-
board supporting- column to the under side of the
cylinder. There remained now the port, or condenser-
column, which, though not so badly cracked as its fel-
low, had also been strengthened in four places with
boiler-plate patches, but needed struts. They took
away the main stanchions of the bridge for that work,
and, crazy with toil, did not see till all was in place
that the rounded bars of iron must be flattened from
top to bottom to allow the air-pump levers to clear them.
It was Wardrop' s oversight, and he wept bitterly before
the men as he gave the order to unbolt the struts and
flatten them with hammer and the flame. Now the
broken engine was underpinned firmly, and they took
away the wooden shores from under the cylinders, and
gave them to the robbed bridge, thanking God for even
[181]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

half a day's work on gentle, kindly wood instead of the
iron that had entered into their souls. Eight months
in the hack-country among the leeches, at a tempera-
ture of 84° moist, is very bad for the nerves.

They had kept the hardest work to the last, as boys
save Latin prose, and, worn though they were, Mr.
Wardrop did not dare to give them rest. The piston-
rod and connecting-rod were to be straightened, and
this was a job for a regular dockyard with every appli-
ance. They fell to it, cheered by a little chalk showing
of work done and time consumed which Mr. Wardrop
wrote up on the engine-room bulkhead. Fifteen days
had gone— fifteen days of killing labour— and there
was hope before them.

It is curious that no man knows how the rods were
straightened. The crew of the Haliotis remember that
week very dimly, as a fever patient remembers the
delirium of a long night. There were fires everywhere,
they say ; the whole ship was one consuming furnace,
and the hammers were never still. Now, there could
not have been more than one fire at the most, for Mr.
Wardrop distinctly recalls that no straightening was
done except under his own eye. They remember, too,
that for many years voices gave orders which they
obeyed with their bodies, but their minds were abroad
on all the seas. It seems to them that they stood
through days and nights slowly sliding a bar backwards
and forwards through a white glow that was part of
the ship. They remember an intolerable noise in their
burning heads from the walls of the stoke-hole, and they
remember being savagely beaten by men whose eyes
[182]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

seemed asleep. When their shift was over they would
draw straight lines in the air, anxiously and repeatedly,
and would question one another in their sleep, crying,
" Is she straight? "

At last— they do not remember whether this was by
day or by night— Mr. Wardrop began to dance clumsily,
and wept the while ; and they too danced and wept, and
went to sleep twitching all over; and when they woke,
men said that the rods were straightened, and no one
did any work for two days, but lay on the decks and
ate fruit. Mr. Wardrop would go below from time to
time, and pat the two rods where they lay, and they
heard him singing hymns.

Then his trouble of mind went from him, and at the
end of the third day's idleness he made a drawing in
chalk upon the deck, with letters of the alphabet at the
angles. He pointed out that, though the piston-rod
was more or less straight, the piston-rod cross-head—
the thing that had been jammed sideways in the guides
—had been badly strained, and had cracked the lower
end of the piston-rod . He was going to forge and shrink
a wrought-iron collar on the neck of the piston-rod
where it joined the cross-head, and from the collar he
would bolt a Y-shaped piece of iron whose lower arms
should be bolted into the cross-head. If anything more
were needed, they could use up the last of the boiler-
plate.

So the forges were lit again, and men burned their
bodies, but hardly felt the pain. The finished connection
was not beautiful, but it seemed strong enough— at
least, as strong as the rest of the machinery; and with
[183]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

that job their labours came to an end. All that remained
was to connect up the engines, and to get food and
water. The skipper and four men dealt with the Malay
boat-builder —by night chiefly; it was no time to hag-
gle over the price of sago and dried fish. The others
stayed aboard and replaced piston, piston-rod, cylinder-
cover, cross-head, and bolts, with the aid of the faithful
donkey-engine. The cylinder-cover was hardly steam-
proof, and the eye of science might have seen in the
connecting-rod a flexure something like that of a
Christmas-tree candle which has melted and been
straightened by hand over a stove, but, as Mr. Wardrop
said, " She did n't hit anything."

As soon as the last bolt was in place, men tumbled
over one another in their anxiety to get to the hand
starting-gear, the wheel and worm, by which some
engines can be moved when there is no steam aboard.
They nearly wrenched off the wheel, but it was evident
to the blindest eye that the engines stirred. They did
not revolve in their orbits with any enthusiasm, as good
machines should; indeed, they groaned not a little;
but they moved over and came to rest in a way which
proved that they still recognised man's hand. Then
Mr. Wardrop sent his slaves into the darker bowels of
the engine-room and the stoke-hole, and followed them
with a flare-lamp. The boilers were sound, but would
take no harm from a little scaling and cleaning. Mr.
Wardrop would not have any one over-zealous, for he
feared what the next stroke of the tool might show.
"The less we know about her now," said he, "the
better for us all, I 'm thinkin'. Ye '11 understand
[184]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

me when I say that this is in no sense regular engi-
neerin'."

As his raiment, when he spoke, was his grey beard
and uncut hair, they believed him. They did not ask
too much of what they met, but polished and tallowed
and scraped it to a false brilliancy.

" A lick of paint would make me easier in my mind,"
said Mr. Wardrop, plaintively. " I know half the con-
denser-tubes are started; and the propeller-shaftin' 's
God knows how far out of the true, and we '11 need a
new air-pump, an' the main-steam leaks like a sieve,
and there 's worse each way I look; but— paint 's like
clothes to a man, an' ours is near all gone."

The skipper unearthed some stale ropy paint of the
loathsome green that they used for the galleys of
sailing-ships, and Mr. Wardrop spread it abroad lav-
ishly to give the engines self-respect.

His own was returning day by day, for he wore his
loin-cloth continuously; but the crew, having worked
under orders, did not feel as he did. The completed
work satisfied Mr. Wardrop. He would at the last
have made shift to run to Singapore, and gone home
without vengeance taken to show his engines to his
brethren in the craft; but the others and the captain
forbade him. They had not yet recovered their self-
respect.

" It would be safer to make what ye might call a trial
trip, but beggars must n't be choosers; an' if the
engines will go over to the hand-gear, the probability—
I 'm only saying it 's a probability— the chance is that
they 11 hold up when we put steam on her."
[185]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

"How long will you take to get steam?" said the
skipper.

" God knows ! Four hours— a day— half a week. If
I can raise sixty pound I '11 not complain."

" Be sure of her first; we can't afford to go out half
a mile, and break down."

" My soul and body, man, we 're one continuous
breakdown, fore an' aft! We might fetch Singapore,
though."

" We '11 break down at Pygang-Watai, where we can
do good," was the answer, in a voice that did not allow
argument. " She 's my boat, and— I 've had eight
months to think in."

No man saw the Haliotis depart, though many heard
her. She left at two in the morning, having cut her
moorings, and it was none of her crew's pleasure that
the engines should strike up a thundering half-seas-
over chanty that echoed among the hills. Mr. Wardrop
wiped away a tear as he listened to the new song.

" She 's gibberin'— she 's just gibberin'," he whim-
pered. " Yon 's the voice of a maniac."

And if engines have any soul, as their masters believe,
he was quite right. There were outcries and clamours,
sobs and bursts of chattering laughter, silences where
the trained ear yearned for the clear note, and tortur-
ing reduplications where there should have been one
deep voice. Down the screw-shaft ran murmurs and
warnings, while a heart-diseased flutter without told
that the propeller needed re-keying.

" How does she make it? " said the skipper.

" She moves, but —but she 's breakin' my heart.
[186]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

The sooner we 're at Pygang-Watai, the better. She 's
mad, and we 're waking the town."

u Is she at all near safe? "

1 * What do I care how safe she is ! She 's mad. Hear
that, now! To be sure, nothing 's hittin' anything,
and the bearin's are fairly cool, but— can ye not
hear?"

"If she goes," said the skipper, "I don't care a
curse. And she 's my boat, too."

She went, trailing a fathom of weed behind her.
From a slow two knots an hour she crawled up to
a triumphant four. Anything beyond that made the
struts quiver dangerously, and filled the engine-room
with steam. Morning showed her out of sight of land,
and there was a visible ripple under her bows ; but she
complained bitterly in her bowels, and, as though the
noise had called it, there shot along across the purple
sea a swift, dark proa, hawk-like and curious, which
presently ranged alongside and wished to know if the
Haliotis were helpless. Ships, even the steamers of the
white men, had been known to break down in those
waters, and the honest Malay and Javanese traders
would sometimes aid them in their own peculiar way.
But this ship was not full of lady passengers and
well-dressed officers. Men, white, naked and savage,
swarmed down her sides— some with red-hot iron
bars, and others with large hammers— threw them-
selves upon those innocent inquiring strangers, and,
before any man could say what had happened, were
in full possession of the proa, while the lawful owners
bobbed in the water overside. Half an hour later
[187]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

the proa's cargo of sago and trepang, as well as a
doubtful-minded compass, was in the Haliotis. The
two huge triangular mat sails, with their seventy-foot
yards and booms, had followed the cargo, and were
being fitted to the stripped masts of the steamer.

They rose, they swelled, they filled, and the empty
steamer visibly laid over as the wind took them. They
gave her nearly three knots an hour, and what better
could men ask? But if she had been forlorn before,
this new purchase made her horrible to see. Imagine
a respectable charwoman in the tights of a ballet-dancer
rolling drunk along the streets, and you will come to
some faint notion of the appearance of that nine-hun-
dred-ton well-decked once schooner-rigged cargo-boat
as she staggered under her new help, shouting and
raving across the deep. With steam and sail that mar-
vellous voyage continued; and the bright-eyed crew
looked over the rail, desolate, unkempt, unshorn,
shamelessly clothed— beyond the decencies.

At the end of the third week she sighted the island
of Pygang-Watai, whose harbour is the turning-point
of a pearling sea-patrol. Here the gunboats stay for
a week ere they retrace their line. There is no village
at Pygang- Watai ; only a stream of water, some palms,
and a harbour safe to rest in till the first violence of the
southeast monsoon has blown itself out. They opened
up the low coral beach, with its mound of white-
washed coal ready for supply, the deserted huts for the
sailors, and the flagless flagstaff.

Next day there was no Haliotis— only a little proa
rocking in the warm rain at the mouth of the harbour,
[188]

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

whose crew watched with hungry eyes the smoke of a
gunboat on the horizon.

Months afterwards there were a few lines in an
English newspaper to the effect that some gunboat of
some foreign Power had broken her back at the mouth
of some far-away harbour by running at full speed into
a sunken wreck.

[189]

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

PART I

I have done one braver thing

Than all the worthies did ;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,

Which is to keep that hid.

THE UNDERTAKING.

"TS it officially declared yet? "

1_ " They 've gone as far as to admit ' extreme local
scarcity,' and they 've started relief-works in one or
two districts, the paper says."

" That means it will be declared as soon as they can
make sure of the men and the rolling-stock. 'Should n't
wonder if it were as bad as the '78 Famine."

" 'Can't be," said Scott, turning a little in the long
cane chair. " We 've had fifteen-anna crops in the
north, and Bombay and Bengal report more than they
know what to do with. They '11 be able to check it
before it gets out of hand. It will only be local."

Martyn picked the * ' Pioneer ' ' from the table, read
through the telegrams once more, and put up his feet
on the chair-rests. It was a hot, dark, breathless even-