Evening Star Newspaper, November 30, 1895, Page 18

18 THE EVENING STAR, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1895—TWENTY-FOUR’ PAGES. THE OEML i BY RODYARD: KIPLING Her nationality will not her house our mercantile mari hu» i-ton, fron, cargo boat, dil present sta ple and such ste: the hour that the Ag Clyde—new, shiny and quart of cheap champagne tricklin her cut-water—Fate and her owner, Between the Devil and the Deep Line Sen. was also her captain, decreed that should deal with embarrassed crowned heads, fleeing presidents, financiers of over-extended ability, wemen to whom change af air was imperative, and the lesser law-breaking powers. Her career led her sometimes into the Admiraity courts, where the sworn statements of her skipper filled his brethren with envy. The mariner cannot tell or act a lie in the fa of the sea or mislead a tempest, but, lawyers have discovered, he inakes up fer chances withheld when he returns to she an affidavit in either hanc The Aglaia with the great Mackinaw salvage her first slip from virtue, and she learned how to change her name, but heart, and to run across the sea. Guiding Light she sry badly ¢ in a South American port for the little matter of entering the harbor at full speed, colliding with a valuable coal-hulk a) state’s only man-of-war, just as that of-war was going to coal. She put to sea Without explanations, though three for! fired at her for balf an hour. As the Jui! MeGregor she had been concerned in pic ing up from a raft certain gentlemen who should have stayed in Noumea, but who Preferred making themselves vastly un- Pleasant to authority in quite another quarter of the world; and as the Shah-in- Shah she had been overtaken on the high seas, indecently full of munitions of war, by the cruiser of an agitated power at issue with its neighbor, That time she Was very nearly sunk, and her riddled hull gave eminent lawyers of two countries great profit. After a season she reappeared as the Martin Hunt, painted a dull slate color with pure saffron funnels and boats of robin's-egg blue, engaging in the Odessa trade till she was invited (and the invita- tion could not well be disregarded) to keep away from Black sea ports altogether. She had ridden through ny waves of depression ‘in. the shipping business. Freights might drop out of sight, seamen’s unions throw spanner and nuts at certifi- cated masters, or stevedores combine till cargo perished on the dockhead, but the boat of many names came ani went, busy, alert and inconspicuous always. Her skip- er, who in a spasm of pride had com- pared her to a servant girl in a house of ill fame, made no complaint of hard times, and port offisers observed that her crew signed again aboard her with the regularity of Atlantic liner boatswains. Her name she changed as occasion called; her well- paid crew never, and a large percentage of the profits of her voyages was spent with an open hand on her engine room.She never troubled the underwriters, and very seldom stopped to talk with a signal station, for ber business was urgent and private. But an-end came to her tradings, and she perished in this manner. Deep peace brood- ed over Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia and Polynesia. The powers dealt together more or less honestly; banks paid their depositors to the hour; diamonds of price came safely to the hands of their owners; republies rested content with their dictators; diplomats found no one whose Presence in the least incommoded them, and monarchs lived openly with their law- fully wedded wives. It was as though the whole earth had put on its best Sunday bib and tucker, and business was very bad for the Martin Hunt. The great, virtuous calm engulfed her, slate sides, yellow fun- nels and all, but cast up in another hemis- phere the steam whaler Haliotis, black and rusty, with a manure-colored funnel, a lit- ter of dingy white boats, and an enormous Blove, or furnace, for burning blubber on her forward well-deck. There could be no doubt that her trip was successful, for she lay at several ports not too well known, and the smoke of her trying-out insulted the beaches. Anon she departed at the speed of the average London four-wheeler, and entered a@ semi-island sea ‘arm, still and blue, which is, perhaps, the most strictly pre- served water in the world. There she stay- ed for three months, under sail for the most part, and the great stars of those mild ykies beheld her playing puss-in-t corner emong islands where whales are never found. All that time she smelt abom- inably, and the smell, (hough fishy, was not wholesome. In the middle of the tenth week calamity descended upon her from the island of Pygang-Watai, and she fled while her crew jeered ata fat black and brown gunboat puffing far behind. The: knew to the last revolution the capacity of every boat on those seas that they wi anxious to avoid. A Pritish ship witi a good conscience dees not, as a rule, flee from the ma n-of-war of a foreign power, and it is aiso breach of etiquette to stop and search n ships at sea. These things the sk of the Haliotis did not re are those damn pearl aise to prove, but held on at an inspirit- fre eleven knots an hour till nightfall. One ning only had he overlooked. The power that kept an expensive steam atrol moving up and down those waters (the skipper had dodged the two regular Ships of the station with an ease that bred gontempt) had newly brought up a third and fourteen-knot boat with a clean bottom to elp the work; and that was why the H. for: driving hard from the east to the wes und herself at daylight in such a position at she could not help seeing an ar: ent of four flags a mile and a half be! hich read: ‘‘Heave to, or take the c juences.”* She had her choice, and she took | @ho end came when, presuming on | draft and international ei led to draw away northward 0»: + 1 THE DEEP Se hoal. The shell that arrived by way of chief engineer's cabin was some five s in diameter, with a practice, not # heen intended to | esa ver this wash alleyway into the riking on a krating, dro Desire . gine room, ve directly of the fo rd ene here it utly fracturing-both the boits that conrecting rod to the forward tion, The lts ic up ly with noth and started t of the nu Neder cover. It 2 dow n, the weight of the steam lehicd, and the foot of the connecting rod, 1 s the leg of a man with a sprained struck the Kile, starboard or right- iron supporting column of the forw ine, cracking it ,| Clean through about six inches above the | base and wedging the per portion out- side. d three che towaad the ps 3 ecting rod jammed. eugine, being as yet unem- t |, went on with its work, and in so doing brought round at its next revolu 2 crank of the forward engine, which note tke already jammed connecting rod. ding it rewith the piston rod -head jiece that sl! S “ head jammed side ‘sin the Hdes, and, in addition to putting further = on the already broken ‘starboard slumn, cracked the port, or left- othing mere that could sines brought up all cough that seemed to aliotis a foot out of the water; ngine room staff, opening every that they could find in the con- n, d on deck somewhat scalded, alm. ‘There was a sound below of happening—a rushing, clicking, purr- rattling ni that did not ore than a minute. It was the udjusting itself on the spur of t toa hundred altered conditions. »p, one foot on the upper grating, s ear sideways and groaned. You ing at twelve knots hout disorgan- i id forward in a cloud of steam, shrieking like a wgunded horse. There was nothing more to do. The nich iron shell, with a reduced charge, had settled the situation, and when you are full, all three holds, of strictiy pre yhen you have cleaned out the . the Sea Horse bank m one end to the other of the Am- n you have ripped out the rich government monopoly p heing n be made to move, the standing with a hi lift the F and the stezm outle fusi 2 Sec s hat five y will not repair your wrong doings—you must smile and take what is in store. But th ipper reflected. a launch put out ff: 3 the man-of-war, that he had en bombarded on the high seas, with the British flag—several of them—picturesquely above him, and tried to find com- the thought. id the stolid naval Neutenant, himself aboard, ‘where are those dam’ pearis?' PART It. They were beyond evasion. No affidavit could do away with the fearful smell of de- eayed oy the diving dresses, and the shell-littered hatches. They were there to the value of seventy thousand pounds, more or less; and every pound poached. ‘The man-of-war was annoyed, for she had | used up many tons of coal; she had strained her engines, and, worse than all, her Gfficers and crew had been hurried. Every one on the Haliotis was arrested and rearrested several times as each officer came aboard; then they were told by what they esteemed to be the equivalent to a midshipman that they were to consider themselves prisoners, and finally were put under arrest. “It's not the least good,” said the skipper, suayely. “You'd much ‘better send us a tow—" “Re still—vou are arrest!” was the reply. “Where the devil do you expect we are going to escape to? We're helpless. You've got to tow us into somewhere, and explain Mean- | HE KEPT THE SUB-LIEUTEN. ‘The man-of-war towed sullenly and vicious- ly. The Haliotis behind her hummed like a hive before swarming. With extra and totally unneeded spars her crew blocked ap the space round the forward engine till it resembled a statue in its seaffolding and the butts of -the shores interfered with every view that a dispassionate eye might wish to take. And that the dispassionate mind might be swiftly shaken out of its calm, the well-sunk bolts of the shores were wrapped round untidily with ioose ends of ropes, giving a studied effect of most dangerous insecurity. Next Mr. Ward- rop took up a cellection from the after en- ne, which, as you will remember, had not en affected in the general wreck. The cylinder escape valve he abolished with a flogging hammer. It is difficult in far-off ports to come by such valves unless, like Mr. Wardrop, you keep duplicates in store. | At the same time men took off the nuts of | two of the great holding-down bolts that “rve to keep the engines ir place on their d bed. Any engine violently arrested in d-career may jerk off the nut of a hold- ‘ng-down bolt, and this accident looked very natural. ' Passing along the tunnel he removed sev- eral shaft coupling bolts and nuts, scatter- other and anefent pieces of fron under- foot. Any engine stopped suddenly may dis- anize her shaft coupling bots, and this lent scemed even more natural. Cylin- bolts he cut off to the number of six rom the after engine cylinder, so that it t match its neighbor, and stuffed the feed pumps with cotton waste. Then he made up a neat bundle of the various “THERE'S JUST A CHANCE OF months beyond knowledge—and it was promised that all would be forgotten. The little gbvernor of the little port was pleased with’ himself. Seven-and-twenty white men made a very compact force to throw away on a war that had neither be- ginning nor end—a jungle-and-stockade fight that. flickered and smoldered through the wet, hot years in the hills a hundred miles away, ‘and was the heritage of every wearled official. He had, he thought, de- served wéil of his country; and if only some one ‘Weald buy the unhappy Haliotis, moored in’?tHe harbor below his veranda, his cup Would be full. He looked at the neatly silvefed Jamps that he had taken from her cabins, and thought of much that might be turned to account. But his coun- trymen in that moist climate had no spirit. They would.,peep into the silent engine room and shake their heads. Even the men-of-war would not tow her further up the coast, where the governor believed that she could-be repaired. She was a bad bar- gain; but her cabin carpets were unde- niably beautiful, and,his wife approved of her mirrors, i Three hours later cables were bursting round him like shells, for, though he knew it not, he was being offered as a sacrifice by the nether to the upper millstone, and his superiors had no regard for his feelings. He was, said the cables, an ass, who had exceeded his power, and failed to report on events. He would, therefore,—at this he cast himself back in-his hammock—produce the crew of the Haliotis. He would send for them, and if that failed he would put his dignity on a pony and fetch them him- OUR MAKING STEAM YET.” odds and ends that he had gathered from the engines—little things like nuts and valve spindles, all carefully tallowed—and retired with them under the floor of the engine recm, where he sighed, being fat, as he passed from manhole tc manhole of the double bottom, and in some fairly dry sub- marine compartment hid them. Any en- gineer, particularly in an unfriendly port, has a right to keep his spare stores where he chooses, and the foot of one of the cylin- der shores blocked all entrance into the regular store room, even if that had not been already closed with steel wedges. In con- clusion he disconnected the after engine, laid piston and connecting rod, carefully tallowed, where it would be most incon- venient to the casual visitor, took out three of the eight collars of the thrust block; hid them where only he could find them again; filled the boilers by hand; wedged the sliding doors of the coal bunkers, and rested from his labors. The engine room was a _ceme- tery, and it did not need a bucket full of ashes tipped over the skylight to make it any worse. He invited the skipper to look at the com- pleted work. “Saw ye ever such a forsaken wreck as that?” said he, proudly. “It aimost frights me to go under those shores. Now, what d’you think they'll do to us?” “Wait till we see,’ said the skipper. “It'll be bad enough when it comes.” He was not wrong. The pleasant days of towing ended all too soon, though the Haliotis trailed behind her a heavily weight- ed jib stayed out into the shape of a pocket, and Mr. Wardrop was no longer an artist of imagination, but one of seven and twenty prisoners in a prison full of insects. why you fired on us. helpless, aren't we?” “Ruined from end to end," sald the man of machirery. “If she rolls, the forward cyl- inder will come down and go through her Mr. Wardrop, we're bottom. Both columns are clean cut through. There's nothing to hold anything up.” The council of war clanked off to see if Mr. Wardrop’s words were true. He warned them that it was as much as a man's life was worth to enter the engine room; and they contented themselves with a distant inspection through the thinning steam. The Haliotis lifted to the long easy swell and the starboard supporting column ground a trifle, as a man grits his teeth under the knife. The forward cylinder was depending on that unknown ferce men call the perti- nacity of materials which, now and then, balances that other heart-breaking power, the perversity of inanimate things. “Yes, sir!’ Mr. Wardrop said, hurrying them away. “The engines aren't worth their price as old iron.” “We tow,” was the answer. we shall confiscate.”” The man-of-war was short-handed, and did not see the necessity of putting a prize crew aboard the Haliotis. So she sent ene sub-leutenant, whora the skipper kept very drunk, for he did not wish to make the tow too easy, and, moreover, he had an incon- spicuous little rope hanging from the stern of his ship. Then they began to tow at an average speed of four knots an hour. The Haliotis very hard to move, and the gunnery t who had fired the five-inch shell ure to think upon consequences. Mr. rdrop was the busy man. He borrowed all the crew to shore up the cylinders with spars and blocks from the bottom and sides of the ship. It a day's risky work; but anytuing was better than drowning at the end of a tow rope; and if the forward cylin- der had fallen it would have made its way to the sea bed and taken the Haliotis after. “Where are we going to and how long they tow us?” he asked of the skipper. “Goce knows! and the sub-lieutenant’s drunk. What do you think we can do?” “There’s just the bare chance,” Mr. Wardrop whispered, though no one was within hearing. “There's just the bare ce o' repairin' her if a man knew how. ve twisted the very guts out of her bringing her up with that jer! but ['m ying t with time and patience there’s “Afterward just the chance o' making steam yet. We could do it” The skipper’s eyes brightened. “Do you mean,” he began, “that she is any good?” “Oh, no, id Mr. Wardrop. “She'll need three thousand pounds in repairs at the lowest if she’s to take the sea again, an’ that rt om any injury to her struc- ture, ‘ke # man fallen down five pairs o’ stairs. We can’t tell for months appened; and we know she'll ain without a new inside. © the condensin’ tubes an’ the ions to the donkey for two I'm not afraid of them re- I'm afraid of them stealin’ They'll don us. have to plain that. “Our reputation’s not good enough to ask for explanations. Let's take what w ave and be thankful. Ye would not have rememberin’ the Guidin’ Light an’ Shah and the Aglaia, at this most alarmin’ erisis. W ve been no better than pirates these ten years. Under Provi- nee we're no worse than’ thieves now. ve much to be thankful for if we ever back to her.” fake it your own w skipper, “if ther the least chance——" “I'll leave none,” said Mr. Wardrop, “none that they’ll dare to take. Keep her heavy on the tow, for we need time.” The skipper never interfered with the affairs of the engine room, and Mr. War- -an artist in his profession—turned to nd composed a work, terrible and for- t His background was the dark- i sides of the engine room; his ma- » metals of power and strength, at with spars, baulks and ropes. t » then,” said the The man-of-war had towed them to the nearest port, not to the headquarters of the colony, and when Mr. Wardrop saw the dismal little harbor, with its ragged line of Chinese junks, its one crazy tug, the boat- building shed, that, under the charge of a philosophical Malay, represented a dock- yard, he sighed and shook his head. “I did well,” he said. “This is the habita- tion o’ wreckers an’ thieves. We're at the uttermest ends of the earth. Think you they'll ever know in England?” “Doesn't look like it,”” said the skipper. They were marched ashore with what they stood up in, under a generous escort, and were judged according to the customs of the country, which, though excellent, are out of date. There were the pearls; there were the poachers, and there sat a small but hot governor. He consulted for awhile, and then things began to move with speed, for he did not wish to keep a hungry crew at large on the beach, and the man-of-war had gone up the coast. With a wave of his hand—a stroke of the pen was not neces- sary—he consigned them to the blackgang- tana, the back country, and the hand of the law removed them from his sight and the knowledge of men. They were marched in- to the palms and the back country swal- lowed them up—all the crew of the Haliotis. Deep peace continued to brood over Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australasia and Polynesia, PART Ill. It was the firing that did it. They should have said nothing about it, but when a few thousand foreigners are bursting with joy over the fact that a ship under the British flag had been fired at on the high seas, | THE HAIRY E self. He had no conceivable right to make pearl poachers serve in any war. He would be held responsible. Next morning the cables wished to know whether he had found the crew of the Hali- otis. They were to be found and freed and fed—he was to feed them—till such time as they could be sent to the nearest English pert in a man-of-war. If you abuse a mau long enough in great words flashed over the sea beds things happen. The governor sent inland swiftly for his priscners, who were also soldiers, and never was a militia regiment more anxious to reduce its strength. No power short of death couid make these mad men wear the uniform of their service; they would not fight except with their fellows, and it was for that rea- son the regiment had not gone to war, but stayed in a stockade, reasoning with the new troops. The autumn campaign had been a fias¢o, but here were the English- men. All the regiment marched back to guard them, and the hairy enemy, armed with blowpipes, rejoiced in the forest. Five of the crew-had died, but there lined up on the governor's veranda two and twenty men- Taarken about the legs with the scars of, leech bites. Five of them wore fringes that had ons been trousers, the others used loin: cloths of gay patterns; and they existed, beautifully, but simply, in the gov- ernor’s veranda, and when he came out they sang at him. If you have lost seventy thousand poynds’ worth of pearls, your pay, your s) and ell your clothes, and have lived in bondage for eight months be- yond the faintest pretenses of civilization, ycu know what true independence means, for ycu tecome the happiest of created things—natural man. The, goyernpr told the crew they were evil, and they asked for food, When he saw how’ they ate, and ‘when he remem- bered that none of the peer! patrol boats Were expected for two months, he sighed. But the crew of the Haliotis lay down in the veranda and sald that they were pen- stoners on the governor's bounty. A gray- bearded man, fat and bald headed, his one garment a green ard! yellow loin cloth, saw the Hallotis tn the hartor and bellowed with joy. The men crowded to the veranda rail, kicking aside the long cane chairs. They pointed, gesticulated and argued free- ly without shame. The militia regiment sat. down im the governcr’s garden. The governor retired to his hammock. It was as easy to be killed lying as standing, and his women squeaked from the shuttered house, “She sold?” said the gray-bearded man, polstine to the Haliotis. He was Mr. War- rop. “No good," said the governor, shaking his head. ‘‘No one come buy.” “He's taken my lamps, though,” said the skipper. He wore half a pair of trousers, and kis eye wandered alcng the veranda. The governor quailed. There were cuddy camp stools and the skipper’s writing table in plain sight. “They've cleaned her out, 0’ course,” said Mr. Wardrop. “They would.” “We'll go aboard and take an inventory. See He waved his hands over the har- ‘We—live—there—now. Sorry The governor smiled a smile of relief. “He's glad of that,” said one of the crew, reflectively wonder.”" They flocked down to the harbor front, the militia regiment clattering behind, and embarked themselves in what they found— it happened to be the governor's boat. Then they disappeared over the bulwarks .of the Haliotis, and the governor prayed that they might find occupation inside. Mr. Wardrop’s first bound took him into the engine room, and when the others were patting the well-remembered decks they heard him giving God thanks that things were as he had left them. The wrecked en- gines stood over his head untouched; no in- expert hand had meddled with his shores; the steel wedges of the store room were rusted home; and, best of all, the hundred and sixty tons of good Australian coal in the bunkers had not diminished. “I don’t understand it,” said Mr. War- drop. “Any Malay knows the use 0” copper. They ought to have cut away the pipes; and with Chinese junks coming here, too. It’s a special interposition o’ Providence.” “You think so?” said the skipper, from above. “There's only been one thief here, and he’s cleaned her all out our side.” Here the skipper spoke less than the truth, for under the planking of his cabin, only to be reached by a chisel, lay a little money which never drew any interest—his sheet anchor to windward. It was all in clean sovereigns that pass current the EMY ARMED WITH BLOW PIPES REJOICED. news travels quickly; and when it came out that the pearl-stealing crew had not been allowed access to the consul (there was no consul within a few hundred miles of that lonely port) even the friendliest of powers has a right to ask questions. The great heart of the British public was beating furiously on account of the performance of a notorious race horse, and had not a throb to waste on distant accidents; but some- where deep in the hull of the ship of state there is machinery which more or less ac- curately takes charge of foreign affairs. That machinery began to revolve, and who so pained and surprised as the power that had captured the Haliotis? It explained that colonial governors and far away men- of-war were difficult to control, and prom- ised that it would most certainly make an example both of the governor and the ves- sel. As to the crew reported to be pressed into military service in tropical climes, It would produce them as soon as possible, und it would apologize if necessary. Now no apologies were needed. When one na- uon apologizes to another millions of ama- teurs who have no earthly concern with the difficulty hurl themselves into the strife and embarrass the trained specialist. It was requested that the crew be found if they were still alive—they had been eight world over. ahd might have amounted to more than a hundred pounds. He's left the alone. Let's thank God,” repeated iMr. 'Wardrop. “He's taken everything else—look!” The Haliotis, except as to her engine room, had bden systematically and scien- tiflcally gutted from one end to the other, and there was strong evidence that an un- clean guard had camped in the skipper’s cabin to regulate the plunder. She lacked glass, plate, crockery, cutlery, mattresses, cuddy carpet and chairs, all boats and her copper ventilators. These things had been removed, with her sails and as much of the wire rigging as would not imperil the safety of the masts. “He must have sold those,” said the sl per. ‘The other things are in his house, suppose. Every fittin: that screwed out was gone, masthead lights, sashes of the chest of drawe photograp! glasses, cabin £ could be pried or Port, starboard and teak grating, sliding deck house, the captain's with charts and chart brackets and looking doors, rubber cuddy mats, hatch irons, half the funnel stays, cork fenders, carpente ne and tool chest, holysto sWabs, gees, all cabin and pantry lamps, galley Sittings en bloc, flags and flag locker, clocks, chronom- eters, the forward compass and the ship's bell and belfry were among the missing. There were great scarred marks on the deck planking, over which the cargo der- ricks had been hauled. One must haye fallen by the way, for the bulwark rails Were smashed and bent and the iron side plating bruised. “It's the governor,” said the skipper. “He's been selling her on the installment plan.” “Let's go up with spanners and shov and kill ‘em all!’ shouted the crew. evs: drown him and keep the woman!’ “Then we'll be shot by that_black-and- tan regiment—our regiment. What's the trouble ashore? They've camped our regi- ment on the beach.” “We're cut off, that’s all. Go and see what they want,” said Mr. Wardrop. “You've the trousers.” In his simple way the governor was a strategist. He did not desire that the crew of the Haliotis should come ashore again, either singly or in detachments, and he proposed to turn their steamer into a convict hulk. They would wait—he ex- plained this from the quay to the skipper in the barge—and they would continue to wait, till the man-of-war came along, ex- actly where they were. If one of them set foot ashore, tHe entire regiment would open fire, and he would not scruple to use the one cannon of the town. Meantime food would be sent daily in,a boat under an armed escort. The skipper, bare to the waist, and rowing, could only: grind his teeth, and the governor impraved the oc- casion, and revenged himself for the bitter words in the cables .by telling what he thought of the morals and manners of the crew. The barge returned to the Haliotis in silence and the skipper climbed aboard white on the cheek bones and blue about the nostrils. “I knew it,” said Mr. Wardrop, ‘and they won't give us good food, either. We shall have bananas morning, noon and night, an’ a man can’t work on fruit. We know that.” PART Iv. Then the skipper cursed Mr. Wardrop for importing frivolous side issues into the conversation, and the crew cursed one an- ether and the Hallotis, and all that they knew or could bring to mind. Then they sat down in silence on the empty de. and their eyes burned in their heads. green harbor water chucked at them dyer- side. They looked at the palm-fringed hills inland; at. the white houses above the harbor road, at the single tire of native craft by the quay, at the stolid soldiery sitting around the one cannon, and, last of all, at the blue bar of the horizon. Mr. Wardrop was buried in thought, and scratched {maginary lines with his untrim- med finger nails on the planking. “I make no promise,” he said at last, “for I can’t say what may or may not have happened to them. But here's the ship, and here's us.” There was a_ little scornful laughter at this, and Mr. Wardrop knitted his brows. He recalled that in the days when he wore trousers he had been chief engineer of the Haliotis. “Harland, Macksey, Noble, Hay, Naugh- ton, Fink, O'Hera, Turnbull.” “Here, sir!’ The Instinct of obedience waked to answer the roll-call of the en- gine room. “Below.” They rose and went. “Captain, I'll trouble you for the rest of the men as I want them. We'll get my stores out, and clear away the stores we don't need, and*then we'll patch her up. My men will remember tnat they're in the Haliotis under me.” He went into the engine room and the others stared. They were used to the acci- “Pll trouble you for the rest of the men.” dents of the sea, but this was beyond their eaperience. None who had seen the engine rcom believed that anything short of new engines from end to end could stir the Ha- Hotis from her moorings. The engine-room stores were unearthed, and Mr. Wardrop’s face, red with the filth of the bilges and the exertion of traveling on his stomach, lit with joy. The spare gear of the Haliotis had been unusually complete, and two-and-twenty men armed with screw jacks, differential blocks, tackle, vices and a forge or so can look Kismet between the eyes without winking. The crew were ordered to replace the holding- down and shaft-bearing bolt, and return the collars of the thrust-bout. When they had finished Mr. Wardrop delivered a lecture on repairing compound engines without the aid of a dockyard, and the men sat about on the cold machinery. The cross-head jam- med in the guides leered at them drunken- ly, but offered no help. They ran their fingers hopelessly into the cracks of the starboard supporting column, and picked at the ends of the ropes round the shores, while Mr. Wardrop’s voice rose and fell, echoing till the quick tropic night closed down over the engine-room skylight. Next morning the work of reconstruction began. It has been explained that the foot of the corne-:ting rod was forced against the foot of the starboard supporting column, which it had cracked through and driven out- ward against the ship's skin. To all ap- pearances the job was more than hopeless, for the rod and column seemed to have been welded in one. But here Providence smiled on them for one moment to hearien them through the weary weeks ahead. The second engineer—more reckless than re- sourceful—struck at random with a cold chisel into the cast fron of the column, and a greasy gray flake of metal flew from un- der the imprisoned foot of the connecting rod, while the rod itself fell away slowly, and brought up with a thunderous clang somewhere in the dark of the crank pit. The guide plates above were still jammed fast in the guides, but the first blow had been struck. They spent the rest of the day grooming the donkey engine which stood immediately forward of the engine- room hatch. Its tarpaulin, of course, had been stolen, and eight warm months had not improved the working parts. Further, the last dying hiccough of the Haliotis seemed—or it might have been the Malay from the boathouse—to have lifted the thing bodily on its bolts and set it down inaccurately as regarded its steam con- nections. “If we only had one cargo derrick!” Mr. Wardrop sighed. “We can take the cylin- der cover off by hand if we sweat, but to get the rod out of the piston’s not possible unless we use steam. Well, thi ll be steam the morn if there's nothing else. She'll fizzle everywhere.” Next morning men from the shere saw the Haliotis through a cloud, for it was as though the deck smoked. Her crew were chasing steam through the shaken and leaky pipes to {ts work in the forward donkey engine; and where oakum failed té plug a hole, they stripped on their loin cloths for lapping, and swore, half boiled and mother naked. The denkey engine worked at a price—the price of constant at- tention and furious stoking—worked long enough to allow a wire rope, it was made up of a funnel and a feremast stay, to be led into the engine room and made fast on the cylinder cover of the forward engine. That rose easily enough, and was hauled through the skylight and to the deck, many hands assisting the doubtful steam. Then came the tug of war, fur it was necessary to get to the piston ard the jammed piston rod. They screwed an iron serew plate on to the piston, doubled the wire rope, and set half a dozen men to smite with an ex- temporized See Tam atthe end of the piston rod where it peered through the pis- ten, while the donkey engine hauled up- ward on the piston itself. After four hours of this furious work, the piston rod sud- denly slipped and the piston rose with a jerk, knocking one or two men over into the engine room. But when Mr. Wardrop declared that the piston cheered and weunds, and the do ye! topped, for its boiler was no thing to per with. And day by day their sup- plies reachcd them by boat. The skipper | humbled hiniself once ernor, and as a conce had ieave to get drinking water from the Malay boat build- er on the quay. It was not good drinking water, but the Malay was anxious to sup- ply anything in.his power if he were pald for it, Now when the jaw: stcod, as it’were, stripped and er ore before the of the forward engine pty, the: THEY THREW their | regular engineerit s hastily | [i HOT COALS AT is iment, when he s y beard and uncut ha T did not ask too mu but i ard tallowed and anc would ped i li half the and the pr nd we'll need a new s n leaks like a Ss werse each way I look, » clothes to a man, an’ oure .- gone.” : WARDROp. inder itself. That work alone filled the better part of three days—warm and sticky deys, when the hands slipped and sweat ran into the eyes. When the last wedge was hammered home there was no “ager an ounce of weight on the suppscting col- umrs; and Mr. Wardrop rvzamaged the ship for boiler plate, three-quarters of an inch thick, where he couid find it. There Was not much available, but what there was was more than beaten gold to him. In one terribie forenoon the entire crew, naked and lean, hauled- back, more or less into place, the starboard supporting col- umn, which, as you remember, was cracked clean through. Mr. Wardron found them asleep where they had fi and gave them a day’s res them like a father as about the cracks. They woke to new and more tryins labor, for over each one of those cracks a plate of Uiree-quarter-inch boiler iron was to be worked hot, the rivet holes being drilled by hand. All that time they were fed on fruits—chiefly banan With some sago. Those were the days when men swooned over the ratchet drill and the hand forge, and where they fell they had leave to lie un: less their bodies were in the way of their fel- lows’ feet. And so, patch upon pateh, + patch over all, the umn was Clouted; but when they tho: was secure, Mr. Wardrop dec noble patchwork would never support 9 ing engines, At best it could only hold the guide bars appro-imately true. ‘he dead weight of the inders must be borne by vertical struts, and. therefore a gang would repair to the bows and teke out with files the big bow anchor davits, each of which was some three inches in diameter. They threw hot coals at Wardrop, and threatened to kill him, those who did not weep (they were ready to weep on the least provocation); tut he hit them with iron bars heated at the end, y limped forward, and the davits came with them when they returned. They slept sixteen hours on the strength of it, and in three days two struts were in place, olted from the foot of the starboard supporting” column to the under side of the cylinder. There remained now the port, or con- denser column, which, though not so badly cracked as ite fellow, had also beer strength- ened in four places with bofler plate jatches, but needed struts. They took away the main stanchions of the bridge for that ‘vork, and, crazy with toil, did not see till all was in place that the rounded bars of iron must be flattened from top to bottom to allow the air pump levers to clear them. It was Wardrop’s oversight, and he wept bitterly before the men as he gave the order to un- bolt the struts and flatten them with nam- mer and flame. Now the broken engine was underpinned firmly, and they took away the wooden shores from under the cylinders and gave them to the robbed bridge, thanking God for even half a day’s work on gentle, kindly wood instead of the iron that had en- tered into their souls: Eight months in the back country among the leeches at a tem- perature of 84 degrees moist is very bad for the nerves. ’ They had kept the hardest work to the last, as boys save Latin prose, and ‘vorn as they were Mr. Wardrop did not dare to give them rest. The piston rod and connecting rod were to be straightened, and this v.as a job for a regular dock yard with every ap- pliance. They fell to it, cheered by a little chalk showing of work done and time con- ed the work, miling. upon drew chalk marks tarboard supporting ¢ sumed, which Mr. Wardrop wrote upon the | engine bulkhead. Fifteen days had gone— fifteen days of killing labor—and there was hope before them. PART Iv. But it is curious that no man knows how the re were straightened. The crew of the Haliotis remember that week very dimly, as a fever patient remembers the delirium of a long night. There were fires everywhere, they say; the whole ship was one consuming furnace, and the hammers were never still. Now, there could not have been more than one fire at the most, for Mr. Wardrop distinctly recalls that no straightening was done except under his own eye. They remember, too, that for many years voices gave orders which they obeyed with their bodies, but their minds were abroad on all the seas. It seems to them that they stood through days and nights slowly sliding a bar backward and forward through a white glow that was part of the ship. They remember an intol- erable noise in their burning heads from the walls of the stokehole, and they re- member being savagely beaten by men whose eyes seemed asleep. When their shift was over they would draw straight lines in the air, anxiously and repeatedly, and would question one another in their sleep, crying: “Is she straight?” | At last—tbey do not remember whether this was by day or night—Mr. Wardrop be- gan to dance clumsily and wept the while, and they, too, danced and wept and then went to sleep, twitching all over; and when they woke men said that the rods were straightened, and no one did any work for two days, but lay on the decks and ate fruit. Mr. Wardrop would go below from time to time and pat the two rods where they lay, and they heard him singing hymns. Then his trouble of mind went from him, and at the end of the third day's idleness he made a drawing in chalk upon the deck, with letters of the alphabet at the angles. He pointed out that, though the piston rod was more or less straight, the piston rod ercsshead—the thing that had been jammed sideways in the guides—had been badly strained, and had cracked the lower end of the piston rod. He was going to forge and shrink a wrought iron collar on the neck of the piston rod where it joined the cross- head, and from the collar he would bolt a Y-shaped piece of iron, whose lower arms should be bLclted into the crosshead. If anything more were needed they could use up the last of the boiler plate. So the forges were lit again. burned their bodies, but hard pain. The finished connection was beautiful, but it not eemed strong enough—at least as strong as the rest of the machin- ery; and with that job their labors came to an end. All that remained was to con- nect up the engines and to get food and waier. The skipper and four men dezlt with the Malay boat builder by night chiefly; it was no time to haggle over the price of sago and dried fish. The others | stayed aboard and replaced piston, piston rod, cylinder cover, crosshead and bolts with the aid of the faithful donkey engine. The cylinder cover was hardly steam- proof, and the eye of science might have | seen in the curve of the connecting rod a flexure something like that of a Christmas tree candle which had melted and been straightened by hand over a stove: but, as Mr. Wardrop said, “She didn’t hit any- thing.” As soon as the last bolt was in place men tumbled over one another in their anxiety to get to the hand starting gear, the wheel and worm, by which er gines can be moved where there is no steam aboard. They near- ly wrenched off the wheel, but it was evi- dent to the blindest eye that the moved. They did not revolve in their‘orl with any enthusiasm, 2s good machir should. Indeed, they groaned not a little; but they moved over and came to rest in a way which proved that they still recognized | man’s hand. Then Wardrop sent his slaves into the darker bowels of the engine room and stokehole and followed them peas put a flare lamp. The boilers were sound, would take no harm from a little sea cleaning. r. Wardrop would any one overzealous, for he fear next stroke of the tool might show. l.ss we know about her no said he, better for us all, I'm thinkin’. Ye'll wind: The skipper unearthed some stale ropy paint of the Joathsome green that they used for the insides of sailing ships, and Mr. Wardrop spread ft abroad lavishly to give the engines self-respect. His own was returning day by day, for he wore his loin cloth ecntinuously; but the crew having worked under orders did not feel as he did; the completed work satisfied Mr. Wardrop. He wowid at last have made shift to run to Singapore, and gone home without vengeance taken, but the others and the captain forbade him: They had not yet recovered their self-respect. “It would be safer to make what ye might call a trial trip, but beggars mustn't be choosers, an’ if the engines will go over to the handgear the probability—I'm only say- ing it's a _probability—the chance is that they'll hold up when we put steam on her.” cw long will you take to get steam?” osked the skipper. od knows! Four hours—a day—half a If I can raise sixty pounds I'll not complain.” “Be sure of her, first; we can’t afford to go out half a mile and break down,” said the skipper. “My soul and body, man, we're one con- tinuous breakdown fore and aft! We might fetch Singapore, though. “We'll break down at Pygang-Watal, where we can do good,” was the answer, In @ voice that did not allow argument. “She's my boat, and—I've had eight months to think in.” No man saw the Haliotis depart, though many heard her. She left at 2 in the morn- ing, having cut her moorings, and it was none of her crew's pleasure that the engines should strike up a thundering half-seas- over chanty that echoed among the hills. Mr. Wardrop wiped away a tear as he lis- tened to the new song. ‘She’s gibberin’—she’s just gibberin’,” he whimpered. “It's the voice of a maniac.” And if the engines have any soul, as their masters believ>, he was quite right. There were outcries and clamors, sobs and bursts of chattering laughter, silences where the trained ear yearned for the clear note and torturing reduplications where there should have been one deep voice. Down the screw shaft ran murmurs and warnings, while a heart-diseased flutter without told that the propeller needed rekeying. “How does she make it?” said the skip- per. “She moves, but—she’s breaking my heart. The sooner we're at Pygang-Watai the bet- ter. She’s mad, and we're waking the town.”” 3 she at all near safe? “What do I care how safe she is? She's mad. Hear that, now! To be sure, noth- ing’s hittin’ anything, and the bearin’s are fairly cool, but—can ye hear?” “If she goes,” said the skipper, “I don’t care a curse, and she’s my boat, too. She went, trailing a fathom of weed be- hind her. From a slow two knots an hour she crawled up to a-triumphant four. Any- thing beyond that matte the struts quiver dangerously and filled the engine room with steam. Morning showed her out of sight of land, and there was a visible ripple under her bows; but she complained bitterly in her bowels, and, as though the noise had called it, there shot along across the level sea a swift, dark prau, hawklike and curious, which presently ranged alongside and hailed; wished to know if the Maliotis were helpless. Ships—even the steamers of the white men—had been Known to brealr down in those seas, and the honest Malay and Javanese traders would sometimes ald them in their own peculiar way. But this ship was not full of lady passengers and well-dressed offic2rs. Men—-white men— naked and savage, swarmed down her sides, some with iron bars red hot at the ends, and others with large hammers, threw themselves upon those innocent, inquiring strangers, and before any man could say what had happened were In full possession of the prau, while the lawful owners bobbed in the water overside. Half an hour later the prau'’s carzo of sago and tripang, as well as a doubiful-minied compass, was in the Haliotis. The two huge triangvlar mat sails, with their seventy-foot yards and booms, had followed the cargo and were be- ing fitted to the stripped masts of the steamer. They rose, they swelled, they filled, and the empty steamer visibly laid over as the wind took them. They gave her nearly three knots an hour, and what better could men ask? But, if she had been forlorn be- fore, this new purchase made her horrible to see. Imagine @ respectable charwomap His One Garment a Green and Yellow Loin Cloth, in the tights of a ballet dancer rolling drunk along the streets, and you will come to some faint notion of the appearance of that nine- hundred-ton well-decked once schooner-rig- ged cargo-boat as she staggered under her new canvas, shouting and raving across the deep. With steam and sail that marvelous voyage continued; and the bright-eyed crew looked over the rail, desolate, unkempt, un- shorn, shamelessly clothed—heyond the de- cencies. At the end of the third week she sighted the island of Pygang-Watai, whose harbor he turning point of a pearling sea patrol. re the gunboats stay for a week ere they ace their line. There is no village at | Prgang-Watal; only a stresm of water, scme palms and a harbor safe to rest in till the first violence of the southeast monsoon has blown itself out. They opened up the low coral beach, with ite long mound of whitewashed coal ready for supply, the de- 1 huts for the saflors and the flagless Next day there was no Haliotis—only a little prau rocking in the warm rain at the uth of the harbor, whose crew watched h hungry eyes the smoke of a gunboat on the horizon. Months afterward there were a few lines in an English paper to the effect that some gunboat of some foreign power had broken her back at the mouth of some faraway har- bor hy running at full speed into a sunken wreck. (The end.) for the Whiskers can be and Is uniformly su: or black. Hence its great