Whereupon, aiming an unlucky blow at the Purser's boy, he hit the Captain's cat. The line snickered. It was just after that the Red Un, surmising a snap by the photographer on the dock and thwarting it by putting his thumb to his nose, received the shock of his small life. The little girl from Coney Island, followed by her mother, was on the pier--was showing every evidence of coming up the gangway to where he stood. Was coming! Panic seized the Red Un--panic winged with flight. He turned--to face the Chief. Appeal sprang to the Red Un's lips. "Please!" he gasped. "I'm sick, sick as h--, sick as a dog, Chief. I've got a pain in my chest--I----" Curiously enough, the Chief did not answer or even hear. He, too, was looking at the girl on the gangway and at her mother. The next moment the Chief was in full flight, ignominious flight, his face, bleached with the heat of the engine room and the stokehole, set as no emergency of broken shaft or flying gear had ever seen it. Broken shaft indeed! A man's life may be a broken shaft. The woman and the girl came up the gangway, exidently to inspect staterooms. The Quartermaster had rallied the Red Un back to the line and stood before him, brandishing his broomhandle. Black fury was in the boy's eye; hate had written herself on his soul. His Chief had ignored his appeal--had left him to his degradation--had deserted him. The girl saw the line, started, blushed, recognised the Red Un--and laughed! IV The great voyage began--began with the band playing and much waving of flags and display of handkerchiefs; began with the girl and her mother on board; began with the Chief eating his heart out over coal and oil vouchers and well soundings and other things; began with the Red Un in a new celluloid collar, lying awake at night to hate his master, adding up his injury each day to greater magnitude. The voyage began. The gong rang from the bridge. Stand By! said the twin dials. Half Ahead! Full Ahead! Full Ahead! Man's wits once more against the upreaching of the sea! The Chief, who knew that somewhere above was his woman and her child, which was not his, stood under a ventilator and said the few devout words with which he commenced each voyage: "With Thy help!" And then, snapping his watch: "Three minutes past ten!" The chief engineer of a liner is always a gentleman and frequently a Christian. He knows, you see, how much his engines can do and how little. It is not his engines alone that conquer the sea, nor his engines plus his own mother wit. It is engines plus wit plus _x_, and the _x_ is God's mercy. Being responsible for two quantities out of the three of the equation, he prays--if he does--with an eye on a gauge and an ear open for a cylinder knock.