I would speak of Hinchcliffe--Henry Salt Hinchcliffe, first-class engine-
room artificer, and genius in his line, who was prouder of having taken
part in the Hat Crusade in his youth than of all his daring, his skill,
and his nickel-steel nerve. I consorted with him for an hour in the packed
and dancing engine-room, when Moorshed suggested "whacking her up" to
eighteen knots, to see if she would stand it. The floor was ankle-deep in
a creamy batter of oil and water; each moving part flicking more oil in
zoetrope-circles, and the gauges invisible for their dizzy chattering on
the chattering steel bulkhead. Leading stoker Grant, said to be a
bigamist, an ox-eyed man smothered in hair, took me to the stokehold and
planted me between a searing white furnace and some hell-hot iron plate
for fifteen minutes, while I listened to the drone of fans and the worry
of the sea without, striving to wrench all that palpitating firepot wide
open.
Then I came on deck and watched Moorshed--revolving in his orbit from the
canvas bustle and torpedo-tubes aft, by way of engine-room, conning-tower,
and wheel, to the doll's house of a foc'sle--learned in experience
withheld from me, moved by laws beyond my knowledge, authoritative,
entirely adequate, and yet, in heart, a child at his play. _I_ could not
take ten steps along the crowded deck but I collided with some body or
thing; but he and his satellites swung, passed, and returned on their
vocations with the freedom and spaciousness of the well-poised stars.
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