g tumult, and stopped dead.
Captain MacWhirr's face was impassive, and his eyes were fixed aimlessly
on the crouching shape of the second mate. Again Mr. Rout's voice
cried out in the depths, and the pulsating beats recommenced, with slow
strokes--growing swifter.

Mr. Rout had returned to the tube. "It don't matter much what they do,"
he said, hastily; and then, with irritation, "She takes these dives as
if she never meant to come up again."

"Awful sea," said the Captain's voice from above.

"Don't let me drive her under," barked Solomon Rout up the pipe.

"Dark and rain. Can't see what's coming," uttered the voice.
"Must--keep--her--moving--enough to steer--and chance it," it went on to
state distinctly.

"I am doing as much as I dare."

"We are--getting--smashed up--a good deal up here," proceeded the voice
mildly. "Doing--fairly well--though. Of course, if the wheelhouse should
go. . . ."

Mr. Rout, bending an attentive ear, muttered peevishly something under
his breath.

But the deliberate voice up there became animated to ask: "Jukes turned
up yet?" Then, after a short wait, "I wish he would bear a hand. I want
him to be done and come up here in case of anything. To look after the
ship. I am all alone. The second mate's lost. . . ."

"What?" shouted Mr. Rout into the engine-room, taking his head away.
Then up the tube he cried, "Gone overboard?" and clapped his ear to.

"Lost his nerve," the voice from above continued in a matter-of-fact
tone. "Damned awkward circumstance."

Mr. Rout, listening with bowed neck, opened his eyes wide at this.
However, he heard something like the sounds of a scuffle and broken
exclamations coming down to him. He strained his hearing; and all the
time Beale, the third engineer, with his arms uplifted, held between
the palms of his hands the rim of a little black wheel projecting at the
side of a big copper pipe.

He seemed to be poising it above his head, as though it were a correct
attitude in some sort of game.

To steady himself, he pressed his shoulder against the white bulkhead,
one knee bent, and a sweat-rag tucked in his belt hanging on his hip.
His smooth cheek was begrimed and flushed, and the coal dust on his
eyelids, like the black pencilling of a make-up, enhanced the liquid
brilliance of the whites, giving to his youthful face something of a
feminine, exotic and fascinating aspect. When the ship pitched he would
with hasty movements of his hands screw ha