There was gossip in the engineers' mess those next days: the Old Man was going to pieces. A man could stand so many years of the strain and then where was he? In a land berth, growing fat and paunchy, and eating his heart out for the sea, or---- The sea got him one way or another! The Senior Second stood out for the Chief. "Wrong with him? There's nothing wrong with him," he declared. "If he was any more on the job than he is I'd resign. He's on the job twenty-four hours a day, nights included." There was a laugh at this; the mess was on to the game. Most of them were playing it. So now we have the Red Un looking for revenge and in idle moments lurking about the decks where the girl played. He washed his neck under his collar those days. And we have the Chief fretting over his engines, subduing drunken stokers, quelling the frequent disturbances of Hell Alley, which led to the firemen's quarters, eating little and smoking much, devising out of his mental disquietude a hundred possible emergencies and--keeping away from the passengers. The Junior Second took down the two parties who came to see the engine room and gave them lemonade when they came up. The little girl's mother came with the second party and neither squealed nor asked questions--only at the door into the stokeholes she stood a moment with dilated eyes. She was a little woman, still slim, rather tragic. She laid a hand on the Junior's arm. "The--the engineers do not go in there, do they?" "Yes, madam. We stand four-hour watches. That is the Senior Second Engineer on that pile of cinders." The Senior Second was entirely black, except for his teeth and the whites of his eyes. There was a little trouble in a coalbunker; they had just discovered it. There would be no visitors after this until the trouble was over. The girl's mother said nothing more. The Junior Second led them around, helping a pretty young woman about and explaining to her. "This," he said, smiling at the girl, "is a pump the men have nicknamed Marguerite, because she takes most of one man's time and is always giving trouble." The young woman tossed her head. "Perhaps she would do better if she were left alone," she suggested. The girl's mother said nothing, but, before she left, she took one long look about the engine room. In some such bedlam of noise and heat _he_ spent his life. She was wrong, of course, to pity him; one need not measure labour by its conditions or by its cost, but by the joy of achievement. The woman saw the engines--sinister, menacing, frightful; the man saw power that answered to his hand--conquest, victory. The beat that was uproar to her ears was as the throbbing of his own heart. It was after they had gone that the Chief emerged from the forward stokehole where the trouble was. He had not seen her; she would not have known him, probably, had they met face to face. He was quite black and the light of battle gleamed in his eyes.