ip to the
horizon. The various groups began to un-crystallise. Sleepy ones went
below and melted away somehow. Sleepless ones went to their great
panacea, smoke. Lights were put out everywhere save where the duties of
the ship required them to burn continually. At last the latest of the
sleepless turned in, and none were wakeful through the iron palace
except the poor youth who mentally measured the distance from home, and
the officers and men on duty. Among the latter was Edgar Berrington,
who, standing at his accustomed post down in his own iron depths,
pondered the events of the evening while he watched the motions of the
great crank and listened to the grinding of the screw.

CHAPTER NINE.

TREATS OF A LEAK AND CONSEQUENT DIFFICULTIES.

It turned out, on investigation, that, whatever the object by which the
vessel had been touched, some degree of injury had been done to her
iron-plating, for the pumps were found to be insufficient to prevent the
rising of water in the hold. This was a serious matter, because
although the rise was very slow, it was steady, and if not checked would
sooner or later sink the ship. Everything that could be done was
attempted in order to discover and stop the leak, but without success.

Fortunately it happened that the _Warrior_ had among her other goods a
quantity of diving apparatus on board, consigned to a firm in Hong-Kong
that had lost valuable property in a wreck, and meant to attempt the
recovery of it by means of divers. The men had gone out by a previous
vessel, but their dresses, having been accidentally delayed, had been
sent after them in the _Warrior_. Bethinking himself of these dresses,
the captain conceived that he was justified, in the circumstances, in
making temporary use of them; but he was disappointed to find, on
inquiry, that not a man of his ordinary crew had ever seen a
diving-dress put on, or its attendant air-pumps worked. In these
circumstances he sent for the chief engineer.

Edgar Berrington was busy about some trifling repairs to the machinery
when the message reached him. The place being very hot, he was clad
only in shirt and trousers, with a belt round his waist--a by no means
unbecoming costume for a well-made figure! His shirt-sleeves were
rolled up to the shoulders, displaying a pair of very muscular and
elegantly moulded arms--such as Hercules might have been pleased with,
and Apollo would not have disdained. His hands were blac