The Chief was suffering from lack of exercise in the air as well as other things.  The girl’s mother was not sleeping—­what with heat and the memories the sea had revived.  On the fifth night out, while the ship slept, these two met on the deck in the darkness—­two shadows out of the past.  The deck was dark, but a ray from a window touched his face and she knew him.  He had not needed light to know her; every line of her was written on his heart, and for him there was no one at home to hold in tenderness.

“I think I knew you were here all the time,” she said, and held out both hands.

The Chief took one and dropped it.  She belonged to the person at home.  He had no thought of forgetting that!

“I saw your name on the passenger list, but I have been very busy.”  He never lapsed into Scotch with her; she had not liked it.  “Is your husband with you?”

“He could not come just now.  I have my daughter.”

Her voice fell rather flat.  The Chief could not think of anything to say.  Her child, and not his!  He was a one-woman man, you see—­and this was the woman.

“I have seen her,” he said presently.  “She’s like you, Lily.”

That was a wrong move—­the Lily; for it gave her courage to put her hand on his arm.

“It is so long since we have met,” she said wistfully.  “Yesterday, after I saw the—­the place where you lived and—­and work——­” She choked; she was emotional, rather weak.  Having made the situation she should have let it alone; but, after all, it is not what the woman is, but what the man thinks she is.

The Chief stroked her fingers on his sleeve.

“It’s not bad, Lily,” he said.  “It’s a man’s job.  I like it.”

“I believe you had forgotten me entirely!”

The Chief winced.  “Isn’t that the best thing you could wish me?” he said.

“Are you happy?”

“‘I ha’ lived and I ha’ worked!’” he quoted sturdily.

Very shortly after that he left her; he made an excuse of being needed below and swung off, his head high.

VI

They struck the derelict when the mist was thickest, about two that morning.  The Red Un was thrown out of his berth and landed, stark naked, on the floor.  The Purser’s boy was on the floor, too, in a tangle of bedding.  There was a sickening silence for a moment, followed by the sound of opening doors and feet in the passage.  There was very little speech.  People ran for the decks.  The Purser’s boy ran with them.

The Red Un never thought of the deck.  One of the axioms of the engine room is that of every man to his post in danger.  The Red Un’s post was with his Chief.  His bare feet scorched on the steel ladders and the hot floor plates; he had on only his trousers, held up with a belt.

The trouble was in the forward stokehole.  Water was pouring in from the starboard side—­was welling up through the floor plates.  The wound was ghastly, fatal!  The smouldering in the bunker had weakened resistance there and her necrosed ribs had given away.  The Red Un, scurrying through the tunnel, was met by a maddened rush of trimmers and stokers.  He went down under them and came up bruised, bleeding, battling for place.