At last an engineer joined them with a lamp from the stoke hole, and, after consulting with the German officer, he led them all back to the dark shaft tunnel. He passed them through, and slid over the steel door until there was only a narrow aperture left unclosed. He squeezed himself through that slit, and then with hammer and cold-chisel drove the door home until the opening was merely a crack wide enough to admit the finger ends. The men plugged this crack with their coats. He put his lamp on top of a shaft-bearing. It showed Captain Keighley still standing there. “Don’t do that,” he said to one of the firemen who had begun to strip to the skin. “Yuh’ll want all yuh can get between yuh an’ the metal, as soon’s that after cargo gets goin’.” The man grumbled, “We’ll be sittin’ on top of a redhot stove in a minute.” Captain Keighley replied, “Yuh can go outside an’ sit _in_ one, if yuh want to.” Lieutenant Moore took a quivering breath through dry nostrils and shut his teeth on the trembling of his jaws. He could hear a low murmur from the fire that was roaring above decks. The little lamp flared dully on the bearings. Beyond that, there was nothing but darkness and silence and the heat that choked. “Well?” Captain Keighley challenged them. No one replied. “I guess yuh got what yuh been workin’ fer, ain’t yuh? Yuh got me into trouble. Yuh been tryin’ hard enough to push me into a hole ever since I broke Doherty.” “Look here, sir,” a fireman named Cripps spoke up. “We’re all in this together. There’s no use jawin’.” “That’s right,” another added plaintively. Captain Keighley nodded. “If yuh’d been all together from the first, we wouldn’t be here, d’ yuh see?” Several of the men answered, “Twasn’t our fault.” They looked at the lieutenant, who had dropped his head and was gazing, empty-eyed, at his feet. “No?” Keighley asked suavely. “Well, it wasn’t mine, was it?” No one spoke again until Cripps asked weakly, “Can yuh get us out, sir?” “Yes,” he said. “Yes. If yuh live long enough, an’ _I_ do, I’ll get y’ _all_ out.... I’ll get out ev’ry man o’ yuh that’s breathin’, any way.... We got to wait here till that fire burns down; that’s all.” The young stoker had begun to sob. Lieutenant Moore opened his parched lips to speak, but his tongue, swollen and dry, like a piece of flannel in his mouth, was too thick to turn a word. The sound of flames rose suddenly to a muffled grumble. Captain Keighley said, “Here’s some cotton waste I hunted up. Pull a wad off to plug yer noses, an’ tie somethin’ over yer mouths. We’ll be breathin’ scorch before we’re through.” He tore off a ball of waste and passed the roll to Moore. It travelled down the line from hand to hand--as if for a sign of union and peace among them--like a “pax.” “Now,” he ordered, “get away from the sides o’ that cargo room, an’ lay yerselves out ’s flat ’s yuh can.” The majority of the men obeyed him meekly.