"All right," he growled. "Come down!"
CHAPTER VIII
A BENEFIT PERFORMANCE
Hughie, having been relieved to a slight extent from sartorial humiliation, entered upon his engine-room duties forthwith.
The society in which he found himself consisted of Mr. Angus, the chief,—engineers, like gardeners, editors, and Cabinet Ministers, are practically all Scotsmen,—Mr. Goble, the acting-second (vice Mr. Walsh, sick), and a motley gang of undersized, half-mutinous, wholly vile sweepings of humanity in the form of firemen. Mr. Walsh was suffering from an intermittent form of malaria contracted years ago in an up-river trip to the pestilential regions round Saigon. Mr. Angus, a hoary-headed and bottle-nosed Dundonian, who could have charmed a scrap-heap into activity, received Hughie with native politeness, and paid him the compliment of working him uncommonly hard. He explained (with perfect truth) that the only reason why he was not at that moment driving a Cunarder was a habit of his, viewed by certain owners with regrettable narrowness of vision, of "takin' a drap, whiles." The concluding adverb Hughie correctly estimated to mean "whenever I can get anything to drink."
"I canna see what for they should be sae partic'lar aboot it," mused Mr. Angus in recounting the circumstance, "for I haundle her jist as weel drunk as sober. However, here I am, and there's an end o't. Aiblins it's jist as weel. I could rin the engines o' ony Cunarder afloat, but I ken fine there's not hauf-a-dozen men in their hale fleet could knock eight knots oot o' the auld Orinoco. There's a kin' o' divinity aboot it, I doot. A man's pit whaur he's maist wantit."
John Alexander Goble, the acting-second, proved to be a man of greater depth and more surprises than his superior. He it was who had thrown the list shoes to Hughie before the battle with Mr. Gates, which showed that he was at heart a Sportsman; he had taken the first opportunity of asking for the return of the same, which showed that he was a Scotsman; but he had found Hughie a better pair of shoes in their stead, together with some garments more suitable than the blue jumper and the orange-and-red pyjama trousers, which showed that he was a good Samaritan: and a man who is a Sportsman and a Scot and a good Samaritan all rolled into one is an addition to the society of any engine-room.
His face wore an expression of chastened gloom; and if washed and set ashore in his native Caledonia, he would probably have received a unanimous invitation to come and glower over the plate in the doorway of the nearest Wee Free conventicle. His speech was slow and unctuous: one could imagine him under happier circumstances conducting family worship, and pausing to elucidate in approved fashion some specially obvious passage in the evening's "portion," thus: "From the expression, 'a michty man o' valour,' we may gather that the subject of this reference was a person of considerable stature and undoubted physical courage."