curtly, as engineers have a habit of
answering.

It was hard for Morten to give up his powder, and he muttered many ugly
oaths as he went down the staircase.

When the Consul again looked out of the window after Morten had gone, he
involuntarily seized the damask curtains tightly in his grasp, for the
change which had taken place in these few minutes was only too apparent.
The wet sail had already turned black, and in another minute was
beginning to shrivel; while the whole of one side of the storehouse
burst into a bright yellow flame, which came streaming down over the
roof, flashing amid the thick smoke, and long fiery tongues began to
lick underneath the vessel.

The Consul knew what there was in the building--tow, paint, oil, tar.
The ship was hopelessly lost; the good ship of which he was even more
proud than any one suspected.

After the first feeling of despair, he began to calculate in his head.
The loss was heavy, very heavy. The business would be crippled for a
long time, and the firm would receive an ugly blow.

And yet it was not this which seemed to crush the determined little man,
until it almost made his knees quiver. This ship was to him more than a
mere sum of money. It was a work he had undertaken in honour of "the
old" against "the new;" against the advice of his son, and with his
father always in his thoughts, under whose eye he almost seemed to be
working. And now all was thus to come to such an untimely end.

The large engine belonging to the town managed to reach up just so high
as to keep the ship's side wet as far as the gold stripe which
surrounded her; but in under the stern the water could not get properly
to work, and small points of flame soon began to break out, and the
Consul could now see that the fire had caught the stern-post.

The side of the ship which was towards the fire became so hot that the
steam rose from it every time the thin stream of water swept over it.
And now all at once a large part became covered with small sparkling
flames, just as if sheets of gold leaf had been thrown against it, which
crackled in the wind, and at last got fast hold in the oakum seams
between the planking. The hose played upon them and swept them away; in
another moment they were there again. They broke out in other places,
ever gaining ground, taking fast hold with their thousand tiny feet
until they got up to the gold band, and even beyond it; and see! the
flames now seemed to take a spr