“Hope your engines will soon be in working order,” sang out the handsome officer from the deck of the man-of-war, giving some other order at the same minute, for I heard the shrill sound of a boatswain’s pipe and the rattle of feet along her deck. “Please report us when you reach your destination.”
“What name, sir?”
“Her Majesty’s ship Aurora, on passage from Bermuda to Halifax.”
With that he waved his hand, and her white ensign, whose blood-red cross of Saint George stood out in bold relief, dipped in parting salute to our vessel, which reciprocated the compliment as the man-of-war bore away on her course to the northward, a group of officers rollicking round their captain on her deck aft and gazing at us as she moved off rapidly under a full pressure of steam, evidently admiring our skipper’s wonderful sea anchor.
As the noble ship glided away through the still tempestuous sea against a strong headwind, a thing of beauty and of might—such a contrast to us lying there, almost at the mercy of the seas—I could not help thinking of the wondrous power of mind over matter displayed in our grand ocean steamers, and what a responsibility rests upon their engineers!
How little do the thousands of passengers who yearly go to and fro across the Atlantic know, or, indeed, care to know, that their comfort and the rate at which they travel through the water—they who talk so glibly of making the passage in such and such a time, be the sea smooth or rough, and the wind fine or contrary—that all this depends on the unceasing vigilance of the officers in charge of the vessel in which they voyage!
Do they even think, I wondered, that while they are sleeping, eating, enjoying themselves and doing what they please on board, even grumbling at some little petty defect or shortcoming which they think might be prevented, the engineers below, in an atmosphere in which they could not breathe, are incessantly watching the movements of the machinery and oiling each part at almost every instant of time, moving this slide and that, adjusting a valve here and tightening a nut there, ever cooling the bearings and raking at the furnaces and putting on fresh coal, this being done every hour of the day and night through the passage from land to land? Have any of them realised the fact that these same engineers and their able assistants, the firemen and oilmen and trimmers, the whole stoke-hold staff, so to speak, run a greater risk of their lives, in the event of an accident happening, than any one else in the ship, as, should a boiler or cylinder burst they may be scalded to death before the noise of the explosion could reach those above? Or again, should the vessel strike on a rock, the compartment below in which perforce they are compelled to work deep down in the vessel’s bowels will fill, from the very weight of the engines, quicker than any other part of the ship, most probably, when those confined below must necessarily be liable to be drowned, like rats in a hole, without the chances of escape possessed by the passengers and hands on board.
“No, I don’t suppose any one even thinks of such things,” said I to myself as I left the bridge and went towards the saloon to ask how poor Jackson was, uttering my thoughts unconsciously aloud as I reflected, and now that I considered their responsibility, thought how much poor old Mr Stokes, with his broken arm, and Stoddart and the others must have on their minds! “Hullo, who is that?”
It was Weston, the steward, who spoke.
“I wish you’d come and look at Jackson, sir,” he said. “The poor chap wore all right when Mr O’Neil comed down jist now, and a sleepin’ still as when you seed him awhile ago. But all of a suddink he starts up as he hears you a comin’ down the companion-way, sir, and is jabbering away like anythink!”