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"In half an hour," Captain Whalley's rigid silvery head repeated behind him as if out of a trance. Amidships, below, two voices, close against the engineroom, could be heard answering each other one angry and slow, the other alert. "I tell you the beast has locked himself in to get drunk." "Can't help it now, Mr. Massy. After all, a man has a right to shut himself up in his cabin in his own time."
Captain Dettmar, springing aft, lifted the coiled mainsail halyards from their pins and threw them, ready to run, on the deck. The three islanders swarmed from the tiny forecastle, two of them leaping to the halyards and holding by a single turn, while the third fastened down the engineroom, companion and swung the ventilators around.
It was the customary warning that the officers' boat would be alongside in five minutes. The Assistant Clerk ran distractedly for the ladder. "There's one 'G'! Have I got time to borrow five bob from the messman before the boat shoves off?" "You might borrow five bob for me while you're about it," shouted a belated Engineroom Watchkeeper, struggling into his clothes.
When the torpedo that cost so many lives exploded within the hull of the La Provence, killing a good part of the engineroom crew, it was seen that only a few of her large company could escape. Lifeboats, rafts, and the makeshift straws to safety that could be seized upon in emergency accommodated a bare 700 and odd men.
You, Sterne? He'll drink himself into a fit of horrors." The chief engineer appeared vague and big at the corner of the engineroom. "He will be good enough for duty to-morrow. I would let him be, Mr. Massy." Sterne slipped away into his berth, and at once had to sit down. His head swam with exultation. He got into his bunk as if in a dream.
And then these three men in the engineroom had the intimate sensation of a check upon the ship, of a strange shrinking, as if she had gathered herself for a desperate leap. "Stop her!" bellowed Mr. Rout.
Captain Whalley, without relaxing the set severity of his features, moved his lips to ask in a quick mumble "How near, Serang?" "Very near now, Tuan," the Malay muttered rapidly. "Dead slow," said the Captain aloud in a firm tone. The Serang snatched at the handle of the telegraph. A gong clanged down below. Massy with a scornful snigger walked off and put his head down the engineroom skylight.
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