ille answered
promptly.

"Well, suit yourself; but that brute Sullivan will kill him some day, I
hear."

"I don't know about that, Chief. The Mouse is game."

"So's a trout; but it's got a damn poor show against a shark," the chief
had added with a shrug.

Neville's watch went on duty shortly after the twin lights above Sandy
Hook had dropped astern. The ship was then rolling heavily enough to
make walking difficult on the oily floor of the engine-room; in the
boiler-room, lower by three feet, to stand steady even for a moment was
impossible. Here, in this badly lighted quarter of the ship, ill humor
hung in the air thicker than the coal-gas.

Dan Sullivan, partly sobered, fired his boiler, showing ugly readiness
for a fight. Larry, stoking next to him, kept a weather-eye constantly
on his fellow-laborer.

Neville's men had been on duty only a few minutes when the engineer came
to the end of the passage and called Larry.

"That's right," Dan growled; "run along, you engineer's pet, leavin'
your work for me to do!"

Larry gave him no answer as he hurried away.

"Make fast any loose thing you see here," Neville ordered.

Larry went about the machinery-crowded room securing every object that a
lurching ship might send flying from its place. When he returned to the
fire-room he heard the water-tender shouting:

"Sullivan, you're loafin' on your job! Get more fire under that boiler!"

"An' ain't I doin' double work, with that damn Mouse forever sneakin' up
to the engine-room?"

Larry, giving no sign that he had heard Dan's growling answer, drove his
scoop into the coal, and with a swinging thrust spread its heaped load
evenly over the glowing bed in the fire-box. He closed the fire-door
with a quick slam, for in a pitching boiler-room burning coal can fall
from an open furnace as suddenly as new coal can be thrown into it.

"So, you're back," Dan sneered. "It's a wonder you wouldn't stay the
watch up there with your betters."

Larry went silently on with his work.

"Soft, ain't it, you jellyfish, havin' me do your job? You eel, you--."
Dan poured out a stream of abusive oaths.

Still Larry did not answer.

"Dan's ravin' mad," a man on the port boilers said. "Will he soak the
Mouse to-night, I wonder."

"Sure," the stoker beside him answered. "An' it's a dirty shame for a
big devil like him to smash the little un."

"You're new on this ship; you don't know 'em. The Mouse is a regular
mother to that