A vague foreboding filled Blake’s soul. He had imagined that the ignominy and agony of physical labor was a thing of the past with him. And he was still sore in every sinew and muscle of his huge body.
“You don’t mean stoke-hole work?” he demanded.
The fourth engineer continued to look worried.
“You don’t happen to know anything about machinery, do you?” he began.
“Of course I do,” retorted Blake, thinking gratefully of his early days as a steamfitter.
“Then why couldn’t I put you in a cap and jumper and work you in as one of the greasers?”
“What do you mean by greasers?”
“That’s an oiler in the engine-room. It—it may not be the coolest place on earth, in this latitude, but it sure beats the stoke-hole!”
And it was in this way, thirty minutes later, that Blake became a greaser in the engine-room of the Trunella.
Already, far above him, he could hear the rattle and shriek of winch-engines and the far-off muffled roar of the whistle, rumbling its triumph of returning life. Already the great propeller engines themselves had been tested, after their weeks of idleness, languidly stretching and moving like an awakening sleeper, slowly swinging their solemn tons forward through their projected cycles and then as solemnly back again.