The last slow pulse of the engines stopped; the electric lights died out, and the glare of the fire reddened the shining metal of columns, cylinders and piston rods. No one moved. They watched, as if fascinated, the approach of a burning horror that seemed to be fighting its way down to them through the bars of the gratings, snarling.
At last an engineer joined them with a lamp from the stoke hole, and, after consulting with the German officer, he led them all back to the dark shaft tunnel. He passed them through, and slid over the steel door until there was only a narrow aperture left unclosed. He squeezed himself through that slit, and then with hammer and cold-chisel drove the door home until the opening was merely a crack wide enough to admit the finger ends. The men plugged this crack with their coats. He put his lamp on top of a shaft-bearing.
It showed Captain Keighley still standing there.
“Don’t do that,” he said to one of the firemen who had begun to strip to the skin. “Yuh’ll want all yuh can get between yuh an’ the metal, as soon’s that after cargo gets goin’.”
The man grumbled, “We’ll be sittin’ on top of a redhot stove in a minute.”
Captain Keighley replied, “Yuh can go outside an’ sit in one, if yuh want to.”
Lieutenant Moore took a quivering breath through dry nostrils and shut his teeth on the trembling of his jaws. He could hear a low murmur from the fire that was roaring above decks. The little lamp flared dully on the bearings. Beyond that, there was nothing but darkness and silence and the heat that choked.
“Well?” Captain Keighley challenged them.
No one replied.
“I guess yuh got what yuh been workin’ fer, ain’t yuh? Yuh got me into trouble. Yuh been tryin’ hard enough to push me into a hole ever since I broke Doherty.”