It was some seconds after this that the Purser, a well-intentioned but interfering gentleman with a beard, received the kick that put him in dry dock for two days.

II

They were three days out of New York on the Red Un’s second round trip when the Second, still playing the game and almost despairing, made a strategic move.  The Red Un was laying out the Chief’s luncheon on his desk—­a clean napkin for a cloth; a glass; silver; a plate; and the menu from the first-cabin dining saloon.  The menu was propped against a framed verse: 

But I ha’ lived and I ha’ worked! 
All thanks to Thee, Most High.

And as he placed the menu, the Red Un repeated the words from McAndrew’s hymn.  It had rather got him at first; it was a new philosophy of life.  To give thanks for life was understandable, even if unnecessary.  But thanks for work!  There was another framed card above the desk, more within the Red Un’s ken:  “Cable crossing!  Do not anchor here!”

The card worked well with the first class, resting in the Chief’s cabin after the arduous labours of seeing the engines.

The Chief was below, flat on his back in a manhole looking for a staccato note that did not belong in his trained and orderly chorus.  There was grease in his sandy hair, and the cranks were only a few inches from his nose.  By opening the door the Red Un was able to command the cylinder tops, far below, and the fiddley, which is the roof of hell or a steel grating over the cylinders to walk on—­depending on whether one is used to it or not.  The Chief was naturally not in sight.

This gave the Red Un two minutes’ leeway—­two minutes for exploration.  A drawer in the desk, always heretofore locked, was unfastened—­that is, the bolt had been shot before the drawer was entirely closed.  The Red Un was jealous of that drawer.  In two voyages he had learned most of the Chief’s history and, lacking one of his own, had appropriated it to himself.  Thus it was not unusual for him to remark casually, as he stood behind the Chief’s chair at dinner:  “We’d better send this here postcard to Cousin Willie, at Edinburgh.”

“Ou-ay!” the Chief would agree, and tear off the postcard of the ship that topped each day’s menu; but, so far, all hints as to this one drawer had been futile; it remained the one barrier to their perfect confidence, the fly in the ointment of the Red Un’s content.

Now, at last——­ Below, a drop of grease in the Chief’s eye set him wiping and cursing; over his head hammered, banged and lunged his great babies; in the stokehole a gaunt and grimy creature, yclept the Junior Second, stewed in his own sweat and yelled for steam.