and
I watch them toil. Think well upon it, my friend. These were men
doing this while you were at your German University, while you were
travelling over Europe and storing your mind with the best of all
times. They are doing it now, will do it while you are at your work at
the Institute. They have their business in the great waters. That
little man there, with two fingers of his left hand gone, is Joe, a
Welshman from his beloved Abertawe. Beyond him, again, the huge gaunt
frame and battered deep-sea cap, the draggled military moustache
surmounted by high cheek-bones, the long, thin, sinewy arms tattooed
with French dancing-girls--where shall our knowledge of the nations
place him? That is Androwsky, from Novorossisk, in South Russia. A
vast, silent man, uttering but three or four words a day. His story? I
cannot tell it, for he never speaks. In my poor way I have tried to
get it in German, but it is no good. In the meantime he is almost the
best fireman in the ship. Indeed, all my men are good. Scarcely ever
do we have less than full steam at the end of the watch.

And now, my engines! To the uninitiated it is, I suppose, a tiresome,
bewildering uproar. And yet every component, every note of this great
harmony, has a special meaning for the engineer; moreover, the
smallest dissonance is detected at once, even though he be almost
ready to doze. So finely attuned to the music does the ear become that
the dropping of a hammer in the stokehold, the rattling of a chain on
deck, the rocking of a barrel in the stores, makes one jump. It is the
same with the eye. It is even the same with the hand. We can tell in
an instant if a bearing has warmed ever so slightly beyond its
legitimate temperature. And so it is difficult to know "who is the
potter and who the pot." The man and the machine are inextricably
associated, and their reflex actions, one upon the other, are
infinite. It is this extraordinary intimacy, this ceaseless vigilance
and proximity, that gives the marine engineer such a pull over all
others where endurance and resource accompany responsibility. In all
big power-stations you will find many men with long sea service in
charge of the engines.

I remember arguing once with a matter-of-fact apprentice in the shop
concerning the suburbs as suitable localities for such as he. He was
not convinced. "There!" he said, slapping the shelf above his bench.
"That's where I'd like ter sleep. All yer gotter do at six o'clock