After seven cataleptic hours of unbroken sleep Blake awakened to find
his shoulder being prodded and shaken by the pale-eyed fourth engineer.
The stowaway's tired body, during that sleep, had soaked in renewed
strength as a squeezed sponge soaks up water. He could afford to blink
with impassive eyes up at the troubled face of the young man wearing
the oil-stained cap.
"What's wrong?" he demanded, awakening to a luxurious comprehension of
where he was and what he had escaped. Then he sat up in the narrow
berth, for it began to dawn on him that the engines of the _Trunella_
were not in motion. "Why are n't we under way?"
"They 're having trouble up there, with the _Commandante_. We can't
get off inside of an hour--and anything's likely to happen in that
time. That's why I 've got to get you out of here!"
"Where 'll you get me?" asked Blake. He was on his feet by this time,
arraying himself in his wet and ragged clothing.
"That's what I 've been talking over with the Chief," began the young
engineer. Blake wheeled about and fixed him with his eye.
"Did you let your Chief in on this?" he demanded, and he found it hard
to keep his anger in check.
"I had to let him in on it," complained the other. "If it came to a
hue up or a searching party through here, they 'd spot you first thing.
You 're not a passenger; you 're not signed; you're not anything!"
"Well, supposing I 'm not?"
"Then they 'd haul you back and give you a half year in that
_Lazaretto_ o' theirs!"
"Well, what do I have to do to keep from being hauled back?"
"You 'll have to be one o' the workin' crew, until we get off. The
Chief says that, and I think he's right!"
A vague foreboding filled Blake's soul. He had imagined that the
ignominy and agony of physical labor was a thing of the past with him.
And he was still sore in every sinew and muscle of his huge body.
"You don't mean stoke-hole work?" he demanded.
The fourth engineer continued to look worried.
"You don't happen to know anything about machinery, do you?" he began.
"Of course I do," retorted Blake, thinking gratefully of his early days
as a steamfitter.
"Then why could n't I put you in a cap and jumper and work you in as
one of the greasers?"
"What do you mean by greasers?"
"That's an oiler in the engine-room. It--it may not be the coolest
place on earth, in this latitude, but it sure beats the stoke-hole!"
And it was in this way, thirty minutes later, that Blake became a
greaser in the engine-room of the _Trunella_.
Already, far above him, he could hear the rattle and shriek of
winch-engines and the far-off muffled roar of the whistle, rumbling its
triumph of returning life. Already the great propeller engines
themselves had been tested, after their weeks of idleness, languidly
stretching and moving like an awakening sleeper, slowly swinging their
solemn tons forward through their projected cycles and then as solemnly
back again.
About this vast pyramid-shaped machinery, galleried like a Latin
house-court, tremulous with the breath of life that sang and hissed
through its veins, the new greaser could see his fellow workers with
their dripping oil-cans, groping gallery by gallery up towards the
square of daylight that sifted down into the oil-scented pit where he
stood. He could see his pale-eyed friend, the fourth engineer, spanner
in hand, clinging to a moving network of steel like a spider to its
tremulous web--and in his breast, for the first time, a latent respect
for that youth awakened. He could see other greasers wriggling about
between intricate shafts and wheels, crawling cat-like along narrow
steel ledges, mounting steep metal ladders guarded by hot hand rails,
peering into oil boxes, "worrying" the vacuum pump, squatting and
kneeling about iron floors where oil-pits pooled and pump-valves
clacked and electric machines whirred and the antiphonal song of the
mounting steam roared like music in the ears of the listening Blake,
aching as he was for the first relieving throb of the screws. Stolidly
and calmly the men about him worked, threatened by flailing steel,
hissed at by venomously quiescent powers, beleaguered by mysteriously
moving shafts, surrounded by countless valves and an inexplicable
tangle of pipes, hemmed in by an incomprehensible labyrinth of copper
wires, menaced by the very shimmering joints and rods over which they
could run such carelessly affectionate fingers.
Blake could see the assistant engineers, with their eyes on the
pointers that stood out against two white dials. He could see the
Chief, the Chief whom he would so soon have to buy over and placate,
moving about nervous and alert. Then he heard the tinkle of the
telegraph bell, and the repeated gasp of energy as the engineers threw
the levers. He could hear the vicious hum of the reversing-engines,
and then the great muffled cough of power as the ponderous valve-gear
was thrown into position and the vaster machinery above him was coerced
into a motion that seemed languid yet relentless.
He could see the slow rise and fall of the great cranks. He could hear
the renewed signals and bells tinkles, the more insistent clack of
pumps, the more resolute rise and fall of the ponderous cranks. And he
knew that they were at last under way. He gave no thought to the heat
of the oil-dripping pit in which he stood. He was oblivious of the
perilous steel that whirred and throbbed about him. He was unconscious
of the hot hand rails and the greasy foot-ways and the mingling odor of
steam and parching lubricant and ammonia-gas from a leaking "beef
engine." He quite forgot the fact that his dungaree jumper was wet
with sweat, that his cap was already fouled with oil. All he knew was
that he and Binhart were at last under way.
He was filled with a new lightness of spirit as he felt the throb of
"full speed ahead" shake the steel hull about which he so contentedly
climbed and crawled. He found something fortifying in the thought that
this vast hull was swinging out to her appointed sea lanes, that she
was now intent on a way from which no caprice could turn her. There
seemed something appeasingly ordered and implacable in the mere
revolutions of the engines. And as those engines settled down to their
labors the intent-eyed men about him fell almost as automatically into
the routines of toil as did the steel mechanism itself.
When at the end of the first four-houred watch a gong sounded and the
next crew filed cluttering in from the half-lighted between-deck
gangways and came sliding down the polished steel stair rails, Blake
felt that his greatest danger was over.
There would still be an occasional palm to grease, he told himself, an
occasional bit of pad money to be paid out. But he could meet those
emergencies with the fortitude of a man already inured to the exactions
of venal accomplices.
Then a new discovery came to him. It came as he approached the chief
engineer, with the object in view of throwing a little light on his
presence there. And as he looked into that officer's coldly indignant
eye he awakened to the fact that he was no longer on land, but afloat
on a tiny world with an autocracy and an authority of its own. He was
in a tiny world, he saw, where his career and his traditions were not
to be reckoned with, where he ranked no higher than conch-niggers and
beach-combers and _cargadores_. He was a _dungaree_-clad greaser in an
engine-room, and he was promptly ordered back with the rest of his
crew. He was not even allowed to talk.
When his watch came round he went on duty again. He saw the futility
of revolt, until the time was ripe. He went through his appointed
tasks with the solemn precision of an apprentice. He did what he was
commanded to do. Yet sometimes the heat would grow so intense that the
great sweating body would have to shamble to a ventilator and there
drink in long drafts of the cooler air. The pressure of invisible
hoops about the great heaving chest would then release itself, the
haggard face would regain some touch of color, and the new greaser
would go back to his work again. One or two of the more observant
toilers about him, experienced in engine-room life, marveled at the
newcomer and the sense of mystery which hung over him. One or two of
them fell to wondering what inner spirit could stay him through those
four-houred ordeals of heat and labor.
Yet they looked after him with even more inquisitive eyes when, on the
second day out, he was peremptorily summoned to the Captain's room.
What took place in that room no one in the ship ever actually knew.
But the large-bodied stowaway returned below-decks, white of face and
grim of jaw. He went back to his work in silence, in dogged and
unbroken silence which those about him knew enough to respect.
It was whispered about, it is true, that among other things a large and
ugly-looking revolver had been taken from his clothing, and that he had
been denied the use of the ship's wireless service. A steward outside
the Captain's door, it was also whispered, had overheard the
shipmaster's angry threat to put the stowaway in irons for the rest of
the voyage and return him to the Ecuadorean authorities. It was
rumored, too, that late in the afternoon of the same day, when the new
greaser had complained of faintness and was seeking a breath of fresh
air at the foot of a midships deck-ladder, he had chanced to turn and
look up at a man standing on the promenade deck above him.
The two men stood staring at each other for several moments, and for
all the balmy air about him the great body of the stranger just up from
the engine-room had shivered and shaken, as though with a malarial
chill.
What it meant, no one quite knew. Nor could anything be added to that
rumor, beyond the fact that the first-class passenger, who was known to
be a doctor and who had stared so intently down at the quiet-eyed
greaser, had turned the color of ashes and without a word had slipped
away. And the bewilderment of the entire situation was further
increased when the _Trunella_ swung in at Callao and the large-bodied
man of mystery was peremptorily and none too gently put ashore. It was
noted, however, that the first-class passenger who had stared down at
him from the promenade-deck remained aboard the vessel as she started
southward again. It was further remarked that he seemed more at ease
when Callao was left well behind, although he sat smoking side by side
with the operator in the wireless room until the _Trunella_ had steamed
many miles southward on her long journey towards the Straits of
Magellan.