ter another Grief passed on Tai-Hotauri's story.
Captain Warfield was particularly incensed, and they could see him
grinding his teeth.

Hermann went below and returned with a riding light, but the moment it
was lifted above the level of the cabin wall the wind blew it out. He
had better success with the binnacle lamp, which was lighted only after
many collective attempts.

"A fine night of wind!" Grief yelled in Mulhall's ear. "And blowing
harder all the time."

"How hard?"

"A hundred miles an hour... two hundred... I don't know... Harder than
I've ever seen it."

The lagoon grew more and more troubled by the sea that swept across
the atoll. Hundreds of leagues of ocean was being backed up by the
hurricane, which more than overcame the lowering effect of the ebb tide.
Immediately the tide began to rise the increase in the size of the seas
was noticeable. Moon and wind were heaping the South Pacific on Hikihoho
atoll.

Captain Warfield returned from one of his periodical trips to the engine
room with the word that the engineer lay in a faint.

"Can't let that engine stop!" he concluded helplessly.

"All right!" Grief said, "Bring him on deck. I'll spell him."

The hatch to the engine room was battened down, access being gained
through a narrow passage from the cabin. The heat and gas fumes were
stifling. Grief took one hasty, comprehensive examination of the engine
and the fittings of the tiny room, then blew out the oil-lamp. After
that he worked in darkness, save for the glow from endless cigars which
he went into the cabin to light. Even-tempered as he was, he soon began
to give evidences of the strain of being pent in with a mechanical
monster that toiled, and sobbed, and slubbered in the shouting dark.
Naked to the waist, covered with grease and oil, bruised and skinned
from being knocked about by the plunging, jumping vessel, his head
swimming from the mixture of gas and air he was compelled to breathe,
he laboured on hour after hour, in turns petting, blessing, nursing, and
cursing the engine and all its parts. The ignition began to go bad. The
feed grew worse. And worst of all, the cylinders began to heat. In
a consultation held in the cabin the half-caste engineer begged and
pleaded to stop the engine for half an hour in order to cool it and
to attend to the water circulation. Captain Warfield was against any
stopping. The half-caste swore that the engine would ruin itself and
stop anyway and for g