"Couldn't be better, sir." He had to yell to make himself heard. "Are we holding our own, sir?" "A full revolution better than any watch since we left port." The man nodded as if he had been expecting it, but presently chuckled and swung one foot playfully toward the glittering gray cross-head as it went driving down into the pit. "A full revolution!" he echoed--"t-t-t"--and spat with obvious significance into the pit. "T-t-t--" mimicked Linnell, and slapped him lightly on the shoulder before he turned to Lavis. "Will you go farther or wait here?" "I'll wait here, if you don't mind, and stand part of the watch with Andie." "Very good! I'll pick you up later." Lavis, standing beside Andie and gazing into the pit, pointed to the great cross-head driving by. "If that were to fly out and go through the bottom of the ship, Andie, would it sink her?" Andie projected his lower lip. "It _might_ sink her, sir, though it don't seem possible-like. But if it _did_ sink her, 'twould be _about_ the only way _to_ sink her, sir." Lavis let his eyes roam above and about him. Andie observed the direction of his gaze. "A wonderful sight, aren't it?" he commented. "What wi' so many polished rods an' shafts all whity-gray, an' all them many beams an' bars so beautiful green an' red-painted!" Lavis, still interested in the wonderful machinery, felt the deck lifted the least bit under him. It was as if the ship had risen to a rolling head sea. He laid hold of a handy stanchion to steady himself, but he saw Andie, unsupported, go sliding easily, gently, irresistibly to the bulkhead behind them. Lavis saw Andie brace his legs, and then, remindful and resentful, bound back to his station and set a hand to each of two levers. The iron deck beneath them was still rolling easily; from beneath the deck came a chafing noise, a slow, heavy grinding. Lavis saw that with hands to levers, eyes on indicator, and ears to gong, the man in dungarees had become oblivious to all but the expected order from the bridge. It came after a time--the warning clang and the needle pointing to ASTERN SLOW. Andie shifted his levers. Rods and shafts reversed. Andie, eyes set on the bridge dial, waited. Lavis could hear Linnell's voice sharply hailing somebody in the boiler-room passage. Presently he saw him running by the bulkhead door; and then, from the far end of the passage, his voice cracking out like a whip: "Back, I say! Back, you dogs, back to your stations! I'll tell you when you're to go." He came bounding in and past Lavis and Andie, up the narrow iron ladder, up the wider one above it. Again Lavis heard him: "You thought to forelay me, eh--and breed panic above? You misbegotten spawn, I'd kill you as I'd kill a cockroach--and every last one of you, if you force me. You dogs--go back!"