This cut direct sent Richter off the bridge; he encountered a bandaged and goggled survivor of the freighter’s wreck at the head of the engine-room ladder. The wireless operator, leaning on a crutch whittled by a bo’sain, avoided Richter, who pushed him roughly aside and descended the ladder, backward.
White steam, lurid oaths, Scotch anathema from the direction of the boiler-room, indicated more trouble. Fergerson came from forward and bumped into Richter, so thick was the escaping vapor.
“Out o’ my way, mon,” the second engineer started to say, then clamped his teeth on his tongue.
“What’s happened, now!” queried Richter.
“It’s that wicked spare boiler—she’s aleak an’ foamin’, an’ there’s water in th’ fire-boxes.”
Richter inclined his bullet shaped head; he heard steam hissing and oilers cursing the day they had signed on the Seriphus. A blast when a gasket gave way, hurtled scorched men between Richter and Fergerson; a whine sounded from the direction of the boiler-room, the whine rose to an unearthly roar: Richter saw a blanket of white vapor floating about the engine’s cylinders. This vapor, to his muddled fancy, seemed to contain the figure of a man wrapped in a winding shroud.
He clapped both hands over his eyes, hearing above the noise of escaping steam a call so distinct it chilled his blood.
“Hylda!”