But at last the lightning began to grow less vivid, the thunder gradually died away in the distance and the sea, little by little, subsided. Firemen, black from head to foot, staggered along the deck to the forecastle and threw themselves just as they were upon their bunks; the second engineer came off duty, a bloody sweat-rag twisted round his head, and reeled, rather than walked, to his cabin. Then McPhulach appeared at the fiddley, mopping his face with a lump of oily waste.
"Are you all right below?" shouted Calamity from the bridge.
"Aye, but some of the puir deils will carry the mairks o' this day upon their bodies as long as they live," answered the engineer. "Hell must be a garden party to what it was down yon a wee while aback."
As he spoke, two injured firemen, the upper parts of their bodies wrapped round with oil-soaked waste, were brought on deck and carried to the forecastle. Their faces, which had evidently been wiped with sweat-rags, were of a corpse-like whiteness that was accentuated by the circles of black coal-dust round their eyes.
"Half roasted," said McPhulach, indicating with a jerk of his head the two injured men. "If they hadna rinds like rhinoceros hide, they'd be dead the noo. Mon, the stokehold smelt like a kitchen wi' the stink o' scorching meat."
The engineer disappeared and Calamity turned to Mr. Dykes, who had relieved Smith on the bridge.
"Serve out a tot of rum to all hands," he said. "It's been a trying experience."
"Trying experience!" echoed the mate. "It was as near hell as ever I touched, sir."
The Captain was about to make some remark when he suddenly snatched a pair of binoculars out of the box fastened to the bridge-rail. He focussed them upon the seemingly deserted waste of tossing grey waters and then handed them to the mate.
"What do you make of that, Mr. Dykes?" he asked, indicating a point on the port quarter.