“Please!” he gasped.  “I’m sick, sick as h—­, sick as a dog, Chief.  I’ve got a pain in my chest—­I——­”

Curiously enough, the Chief did not answer or even hear.  He, too, was looking at the girl on the gangway and at her mother.  The next moment the Chief was in full flight, ignominious flight, his face, bleached with the heat of the engine room and the stokehole, set as no emergency of broken shaft or flying gear had ever seen it.  Broken shaft indeed!  A man’s life may be a broken shaft.

The woman and the girl came up the gangway, exidently to inspect staterooms.  The Quartermaster had rallied the Red Un back to the line and stood before him, brandishing his broomhandle.  Black fury was in the boy’s eye; hate had written herself on his soul.  His Chief had ignored his appeal—­had left him to his degradation—­had deserted him.

The girl saw the line, started, blushed, recognised the Red Un—­and laughed!

IV

The great voyage began—­began with the band playing and much waving of flags and display of handkerchiefs; began with the girl and her mother on board; began with the Chief eating his heart out over coal and oil vouchers and well soundings and other things; began with the Red Un in a new celluloid collar, lying awake at night to hate his master, adding up his injury each day to greater magnitude.

The voyage began.  The gong rang from the bridge.  Stand By! said the twin dials.  Half Ahead!  Full Ahead!  Full Ahead!  Man’s wits once more against the upreaching of the sea!  The Chief, who knew that somewhere above was his woman and her child, which was not his, stood under a ventilator and said the few devout words with which he commenced each voyage: 

“With Thy help!” And then, snapping his watch:  “Three minutes past ten!”

The chief engineer of a liner is always a gentleman and frequently a Christian.  He knows, you see, how much his engines can do and how little.  It is not his engines alone that conquer the sea, nor his engines plus his own mother wit.  It is engines plus wit plus x, and the x is God’s mercy.  Being responsible for two quantities out of the three of the equation, he prays—­if he does—­with an eye on a gauge and an ear open for a cylinder knock.

There was gossip in the engineers’ mess those next days:  the Old Man was going to pieces.  A man could stand so many years of the strain and then where was he?  In a land berth, growing fat and paunchy, and eating his heart out for the sea, or——­ The sea got him one way or another!

The Senior Second stood out for the Chief.

“Wrong with him?  There’s nothing wrong with him,” he declared.  “If he was any more on the job than he is I’d resign.  He’s on the job twenty-four hours a day, nights included.”

There was a laugh at this; the mess was on to the game.  Most of them were playing it.