“Non, non,” said the officer, intervening.  “Hees excellenz dislikes to be—­importuned.”  The last word cost the speaker an effort; to the listener it was hardly intelligible, but the officer’s manner indicated plainly his meaning.  Mr. Heatherbloom managed to hold himself still; he seemed standing in the center of a vortex.  The prince had by this time gone; the woman did not step forth.  This lame and impotent conclusion was out of all proportion to the seemingly inevitable.  He could scarcely realize it was he—­actually he!—­who, after another pause, followed the officer, with scant interest, hardly any at all, to some inferno where flames leaped and hissed.

He could not but be aware of them, although the voice telling him that he would remain here, make himself useful, and, incidentally, work his way among the stokers, sounded very far off.  He could have exclaimed scoffingly after the disappearing officer, not anxious to linger any longer than necessary here.  Work his way, indeed!  How long would he be permitted to do so?  When would he be again sent for, and dealt with—­in what manner?

He shoveled coal feverishly though the irony of the task smote him, for in feeding the insatiable beds, he was with his own hand helping to furnish the energy that wafted her, he would have served, farther and farther from the home land.  Every additional mile put between that shore and the boat, increased the prince’s sense of power.  He was working for his excellency and against her.  In a revulsion of feeling he leaned on his shovel, whereupon a besooted giant of the lower regions tapped his shoulder.  This person—­foreman of the gang—­pointed significantly to the inactive implement.  His brow was low, brutish, and he had a fist like a hammer.  Mr. Heatherbloom lifted the shovel and looked at the low brow but, fortunately, he did not act on the impulse.  It was as if some detaining angel reached down into those realms of Pluto and, at the critical moment, laid a white hand where the big paw had touched him.

The young man resumed his toil.  After all, what did it matter?—­some one would shovel the stuff.  That brief revolt had been spasmodic, sentimental.  Here where the heat was almost intolerable and the red tongues sprang like forked daggers before dulled eyes, brutality and hatred alone seemed to reign.  The prince might be the prodigal, free-handed gentleman to his officers; he was the slave-driver, by proxy, to his stokers.  He who dominated in that place of torment had been an overseer from one of the villages the prince owned; these men were the descendants of serfs.

Once or twice Heatherbloom rather incoherently tried to engage one or two of them in conversation, to learn where the yacht was going—­to Southern seas, across the Atlantic?—­but they only stared at him as if he were some strange being quite beyond their ken.  So he desisted; of course they could not understand him, and, of course, they knew nothing he wished to know.  In this prison a sense of motion and direction was as naught.