There would still be an occasional palm to grease, he told himself, an occasional bit of pad money to be paid out. But he could meet those emergencies with the fortitude of a man already inured to the exactions of venal accomplices.
Then a new discovery came to him. It came as he approached the chief engineer, with the object in view of throwing a little light on his presence there. And as he looked into that officer's coldly indignant eye he awakened to the fact that he was no longer on land, but afloat on a tiny world with an autocracy and an authority of its own. He was in a tiny world, he saw, where his career and his traditions were not to be reckoned with, where he ranked no higher than conch-niggers and beach-combers and cargadores. He was a dungaree-clad greaser in an engine-room, and he was promptly ordered back with the rest of his crew. He was not even allowed to talk.
When his watch came round he went on duty again. He saw the futility of revolt, until the time was ripe. He went through his appointed tasks with the solemn precision of an apprentice. He did what he was commanded to do. Yet sometimes the heat would grow so intense that the great sweating body would have to shamble to a ventilator and there drink in long drafts of the cooler air. The pressure of invisible hoops about the great heaving chest would then release itself, the haggard face would regain some touch of color, and the new greaser would go back to his work again. One or two of the more observant toilers about him, experienced in engine-room life, marveled at the newcomer and the sense of mystery which hung over him. One or two of them fell to wondering what inner spirit could stay him through those four-houred ordeals of heat and labor.
Yet they looked after him with even more inquisitive eyes when, on the second day out, he was peremptorily summoned to the Captain's room. What took place in that room no one in the ship ever actually knew.
But the large-bodied stowaway returned below-decks, white of face and grim of jaw. He went back to his work in silence, in dogged and unbroken silence which those about him knew enough to respect.
It was whispered about, it is true, that among other things a large and ugly-looking revolver had been taken from his clothing, and that he had been denied the use of the ship's wireless service. A steward outside the Captain's door, it was also whispered, had overheard the shipmaster's angry threat to put the stowaway in irons for the rest of the voyage and return him to the Ecuadorean authorities. It was rumored, too, that late in the afternoon of the same day, when the new greaser had complained of faintness and was seeking a breath of fresh air at the foot of a midships deck-ladder, he had chanced to turn and look up at a man standing on the promenade deck above him.
The two men stood staring at each other for several moments, and for all the balmy air about him the great body of the stranger just up from the engine-room had shivered and shaken, as though with a malarial chill.
What it meant, no one quite knew. Nor could anything be added to that rumor, beyond the fact that the first-class passenger, who was known to be a doctor and who had stared so intently down at the quiet-eyed greaser, had turned the color of ashes and without a word had slipped away. And the bewilderment of the entire situation was further increased when the Trunella swung in at Callao and the large-bodied man of mystery was peremptorily and none too gently put ashore. It was noted, however, that the first-class passenger who had stared down at him from the promenade-deck remained aboard the vessel as she started southward again. It was further remarked that he seemed more at ease when Callao was left well behind, although he sat smoking side by side with the operator in the wireless room until the Trunella had steamed many miles southward on her long journey towards the Straits of Magellan.