It seemed to the engineer, as he hesitated, that Hylda’s lover moaned once and filled the boiler with a hollow sound.
Hesitation passed; and Richter swallowed his superstitious fears, put back the man-hole plate, bolted it tighter than it ever was before, almost stripping the threads, and stepped back, mopping his brow with the sleeve of a shore-coat.
There was nothing very unusual in Richter’s further actions that evening. The ship-keeper, who came aboard at daylight, long before the dry-dock men began work, noticed a wet shore-hose, a thin plume of steam aft the tanker’s squat funnel, and there was a trailing line of smoke drifting aslant the Seriphus’ littered deck.
“Been testing that spare boiler,” explained Richter, when the ship-keeper ducked through the bulkhead door. “I think it’s tight an’ unscaled, but th’ starboard one will need new tubes and general cleaning. Get me some soap—I want to wash up.”
Richter dried his hands on a towel, tossed it toward the motor-driven feed-pump, then, when he left the boiler-room, his glance ranged from the tightly-bolted man-hole cover up to a gauge on a steam-pipe. The gauge read seventy-pounds—sufficient to parboil a heavier man than Hylda’s lover.
“I think that was a good job,” concluded the first engineer of the Seriphus.
The second engineer of the tanker, a Scot with a burr on his voice like a file rasping the edge of a plate, stood watching Richter balance himself as the stout chief came along a shoring-beam.
“I mark ye ha’ steam up,” commented the Scotchman, when Richter climbed over the dry dock’s wall.
“Yes, in the spareboiler.”
Mr. S. V. Fergerson tapped a pipe on his heel.