and violent oscillation of the
vessel, which pitched and rolled, and then heeled over suddenly to port,
while an avalanche of water came thundering down the hatchway on top of
our heads.

"Good Lord, we're lost!" gulped out Mr Stokes as we all floundered
together on the grating forming the floor of the engine-room, where
fortunately the flood had washed us, instead of hustling us down the
stoke-hold below, where all three of us would most inevitably have been
killed by the fall. "A boiler's burst and the ship broached-to!"

"Not quite so bad as that, sir," sang out the voice of Grummet in the
distance, the thick vapour lending it a far-away sound. "The vessel is
recovering herself again, and the cylinder cover's blown off, sir--
that's all!"

"_All_, indeed!" exclaimed the old chief in a despairing tone as he
staggered to his feet, enabling Mr Fosset and myself to rise up too--an
impossibility before, as he was right on top of us, and had served us
out worse than the water had done. "Quite enough damage for me, and all
of us, I think!"

"How's your arm, Mr Stokes?" asked Mr Fosset as the atmosphere cleared
a little and the engine-room lights glimmered through the misty darkness
that now enveloped the place. "I hope it hasn't been hurt by your
tumble?"

"Oh, damn my arm!" cried the other impatiently, evidently more anxious
about the machinery than his arm. "Have you shut off the steam?"

"Yes, sir," replied his subordinate calmly. "I closed all the stop
valves up here the moment I knew what had happened; and the men below in
the stoke-hold have cut off the supply from the main pipe, while Mr
Links has gone into the screw well to disconnect the propeller."

"Very good, Grummet. So they be all right down below?"

"All right, sir."

"Thank God for that! How about the fires?"

"Drowned out, sir, all but the one under the fire boiler on the
starboard side."

"You'd better look after that, to keep the bilge-pumps going, or else
it'll be all drowned out, with this lot of water coming down the
hatchway every time the ship rolls! I do hope the skipper will lie-to
and keep her head to sea until we can get the engines going again,
though I'm afraid that'll be a long job!"

Before Grummet could reply to this, Stoddart, the second officer, or
rather engineer, came scrambling down from the saloon, where he had been
assisting Garry O'Neil in making poor Jackson comfortable, the escape of
the steam having evide