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She could not doubt his sincerity, and there was something in her own consciousness which responded to the suspicions he had expressed with regard to the questionable impulses of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker. It is not in the words that others say to us, but in those other words which these make us say to ourselves, that we find our gravest lessons and our sharpest rebukes.
They were drawn up regardless of class or rating, and a burly Marine Artilleryman, wriggling out of his cholera belt, laughed in the blackened face of a stoker fresh from the furnace door. "Cheer up, mate!" he said encouragingly. "You'll soon 'ave a chance to wash your bloomin' face!" The ship gave a sudden lurch, settled deeper in the water, and began to heel slowly over.
Azuma-zi hesitated, and then slipped across noiselessly into the shadow by the switch. There he waited. Presently the manager's footsteps could be heard returning. He stopped in his old position, unconscious of the stoker crouching ten feet away from him. Then the big dynamo suddenly fizzled, and in another moment Azuma-zi had sprung out of the darkness upon him.
Channing welcomed them joyously, and then crumpled up in a heap and pitched forward into the arms of the captain. His head swung weakly from shoulder to shoulder. "I beg your pardon," he muttered, "I beg your pardon, captain, but your engine-room is too hot. I'm only a stoker and I know my place, sir, but I tell you, your engine-room is too hot. It's a burning hell, sir, it's a hell!"
But the words were couched in a strange tongue, sonorous and full voweled, and the Hungarians in the room became greatly stirred when it dawned on them that a semi-intoxicated American stoker was chanting a forbidden national melody. Far better than he knew, he sounded uncharted deeps in human nature.
Replied the Fireman, "The master overwhelmeth us with his favours!" Then the bathman proceeded to shave Zau al-Makan's head, after which he and the Stoker washed themselves and returned to the house, where he clad Zau al-Makan in a shirt of fine stuff and a robe of his own; and gave him a handsome turband and girdle and a light kerchief which he wound about his neck.
"I'll surprise 'im!" muttered the engineer, "when I meets 'im!" The stoker continued: "So the long an' the short is, I insured Billy, an' Billy's dead!" "You don't really think so?" cried the engineer, in shocked accents. "I don't think," said the stoker, in a hard, high tone, "I knows 'e is." "Not burned with the van!" gasped the engineer. "Burned to cinders," said the stoker comfortably.
The engineer turned to the stoker. "How did he happen to fall?" he asked. "He didn't fall," declared the begrimed coal heaver. "No? What then " "'Nother chap jumped on his back and flung him down. It's wonderful he wasn't killed." Frank was triumphant. He regarded the engineer and his assistant with a grim smile on his face. "This is incredible!" exclaimed the engineer.
The driver and stoker seem to be the object of their very particular attention. They are two brave Chinamen who have just come on duty, and perhaps Faruskiar is not sorry to see men in whom he can trust, with this imperial treasure and a hundred passengers behind them! The hour for departure strikes, and at midnight the engine begins to move, emitting two or three loud whistles.
"A bright, moving study of an unusually interesting period in the life of Napoleon, ... deliciously told; the characters are clearly, strongly, and very delicately modeled, and the touches of color most artistically done." N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. THE WATTER'S MOU'. By Bram Stoker. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
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