Lavis saw that with hands to levers, eyes on indicator, and ears to gong, the man in dungarees had become oblivious to all but the expected order from the bridge. It came after a time—the warning clang and the needle pointing to Astern Slow.
Andie shifted his levers. Rods and shafts reversed. Andie, eyes set on the bridge dial, waited.
Lavis could hear Linnell's voice sharply hailing somebody in the boiler-room passage. Presently he saw him running by the bulkhead door; and then, from the far end of the passage, his voice cracking out like a whip: "Back, I say! Back, you dogs, back to your stations! I'll tell you when you're to go."
He came bounding in and past Lavis and Andie, up the narrow iron ladder, up the wider one above it. Again Lavis heard him: "You thought to forelay me, eh—and breed panic above? You misbegotten spawn, I'd kill you as I'd kill a cockroach—and every last one of you, if you force me. You dogs—go back!"
Cries and oaths, then the thud of a heavy weapon on bone and flesh, the falling of stumbling bodies on the iron grating above. A silence, and then Linnell's voice again, now more controlled: "You there, Wallace? Well, stay there. An' let not a single one of 'em pass without my orders. Shoot 'em down if you have to, but keep 'em below."
The ship was still backing. Wh-r-r-i-ng! went the gong. Stop! commanded the indicator. Andie shifted the levers. The tremendous machinery hung motionless.
All was quiet. Not a quiver from out of the great compartment. Through the grating over his head Lavis saw the figure of the chief hurriedly descending. He saw him turn, pause a moment at the head of the narrow ladder, and then come sliding down.
"Doing our best, some of 'em will get up above," he said quietly. "But we've enough left for a watch." He stepped to Andie's side, all the while with his eyes roaming over the machinery. "She answered her bells promptly, Andie?"
"To the stroke, sir."
"Good! Stay by her. Pass the word to me if aught goes wrong."