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But when the Flamingo began to make her southing, and the yellow tangles of weed floating in emerald waves bore evidence that they were steaming against the warm current of the Gulf Stream, then Hamilton came into view. He found a spot on the top of the fiddley under the lee of a tank where a chair could stand, and sat there in the glow of sun and boilers, and basked complacently.
The shattered wreck of the lifeboat they had held lay on the fiddley beside the smashed engine-room skylight, which was covered by a tarpaulin. Below, to star-board, on the bridge deck, the pilot saw the crushed mess-room door, roughly bulkheaded against the pounding seas.
The after stokehole was flooded and water rolled sickeningly in the engine-pits. Each second it seemed the ship must take its fearful dive into the quiet sea that so insistently reached up for her. With infinite labour the Seconds got the Chief up to the fiddley, twenty feet or less out of a hundred, and straight ladders instead of a steel staircase.
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.
The small handful of whites were on the top of the fiddley, and while most were fighting to keep the Africans back, a couple were frenziedly working to get a pair of davits swung outboard, and a lifeboat which hung from them lowered into the water.
Kettle vaulted over the rail on to the top of the fiddley, and made for his second in command. "Here, my man, if your delicate fingers can't do this bit of a job, give me that marlinspike. By James! do you hear me? Give up the marlinspike. Did you never see a boat iced up before? Now then, carpenter. Are you worth your salt? Or am I to clear both ends in this boat by myself?"
"Aye," the skipper went on wearily, "an' on both sides the steam- pipe uz well. I tell ye he was in two pieces, splut clean uz a herrin'. The sea must a-caught hum on the upper brudge deck, carried hum clean across the fiddley, an' banged hum head-on tull the pipe cover.
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