“You are not to give me--to give us, one thought,” she warmly assured him, and her head was held high. “Thank you for being honest with me, Captain O’Shea. Do you wish us to stay on deck?” Perplexed and unhappy, he answered: “There is no safe place to stow you if the Spaniard gets within shooting range. The hold is full of cartridges and dynamite and such skittish truck.” The steamer astern was still slowly gaining on the _Fearless_. Her forward mast was now discernible, and the tiny ring around it was unmistakably a fighting-top. If the vessel belonged to any other navy than that of Spain, she would be jogging along at a cruising gait, instead of crowding in chase with a reckless consumption of coal. Captain O’Shea ran below to see how matters fared in the sooty, stifling kingdom of Johnny Kent. The _Fearless_ could not turn and fight. All hopes of safety were bound up in those clanking, throbbing, shining engines, in the hissing boilers, in the gang of half-naked, grimy men who fed the raging furnaces and wielded the glowing slice-bars and shifted the coal from the cavernous bunkers. The quivering needles of the gauges already recorded more steam than the law allowed, and they were creeping higher pound by pound. The heat in the fire-room was so intense that the men had to be relieved at brief intervals. There was no forced ventilation, and the wind was following the ship. The deck-hands, unaccustomed to grilling alive, stood to it pluckily until they collapsed and were hauled out by the head and the heels. Back and forth, between the engine-room and this inferno, waddled Johnny Kent, raining perspiration, an oil-can in one hand, a heavy wrench in the other, and with the latter he smote such faint-hearted wights as would falter while there was strength in them. “Hello, Cap’n Mike,” he roared as the skipper sidled into the engine-room. “Is the other vessel still gainin’ on us, and what does she look like?” “She looks like trouble, Johnny. We are doing better. How are things with you?” “I need a couple of husky men. No use sendin’ me those limpsy patriots.” “I will look for them, Johnny. Will your boilers hold together? Can you get any more out of her?” “Of course I can. She’s licensed to carry a hundred and eighty pounds, and I aim to push her to two hundred and fifty.” Captain O’Shea hastened on deck, glanced forward and aft, and grinned as he caught sight of Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen. To this pampered young man he shouted: “You are a well-built lad. Jump below, if you please, and the chief will introduce ye to a shovel.” “But I don’t want a shovel. I refuse to go below,” haughtily replied Van Steen. “It has occurred to me that if you will quit this silly race and let the other steamer come within signalling distance I can explain the case to her commander, and he will be glad to take us on board. Van Steen & Van Steen have influential banking connections with the Spanish government.”