"Get up from there!" he cried sharply. "Go see what you can find to help him." Dan left the room, rubbing his red-flanneled arm across his eyes. He returned quickly with a can of cylinder oil, and poured it slowly over the horribly burned limbs. "There ain't no bandages, sir; only this." He held out a shirt belonging to the engineer; his eyes pleaded his question. Neville nodded, and Dan tore the shirt in strips. When he finished the task, strange to his clumsy hands, Larry had regained consciousness and lay trying pitifully to stifle his moans. "Does it make you feel aisier, Mouse?" Dan leaned close to the quivering lips to catch the answer. "It helps fine," Larry answered, and fainted again. "You'll be leavin' me stay wid him, sir?" Dan begged. "'T was for me he's come to this." Neville gave consent and left the two men together. * * * Between four and five in the morning, when Neville's watch had lived through thirty-three unbroken hours of the fearful grind, a shout that ended in a screaming laugh ran through the fire-room. High above the toil-crazed men a door had opened and closed. A form, seen dimly through the smoke and steam, was moving backward down the ladder. Again the door opened; another man came through. Every shovel in the room fell to the steel floor; every man in the room shouted or laughed or cried. The engine-room door, too, had opened, admitting the chief and his assistant. Not until he had examined each mechanical tragedy below did the chief give time to the human one above. "Where's that man that's hurt?" he asked as he came, slowly, from an inspection of the burned-out bearings down the shaft alley. Neville went with him to the store-room. Dan, sagging under fatigue, clung to the bench where Larry lay moaning. "You can go now, Sullivan," Neville told him. Dan raised his head, remorse, entreaty, stubbornness in his look. "Let me be! I'll not leave him!" The chief turned to Neville. "What's come over that drunk?" he asked. "Ever since the Mouse got hurt, Sullivan's acted queer, just like a woman." "Get to your quarters, Sullivan," the chief ordered. "We'll take care of this man." Dan's hands closed; for an instant he glared rebellion from blood-shot eyes. Then the iron law of sea discipline conquering, he turned to Larry. "The Blessed Virgin aise you, poor Mouse!" he mumbled huskily and slouched out through the door. * * * At midday the _San Gardo's_ captain got a shot at the sun. Though his vessel had been headed steadily northeast for more than thirty hours, the observation showed that she had made twenty-eight miles sternway to the southwest. By two in the afternoon the wind had dropped to half a gale, making a change of course possible. The captain signaled full speed ahead, and the ship, swinging about, began limping across the gulf, headed once more toward Galveston.