“‘Run her as near as ye daur,’ I said. ‘Gie me a jacket an’ a lifeline, an’ I’ll swum for it.’ There was a bit lump of a sea, an’ it was cold in the wind—vara cold; but they’d gone overside like passengers, young Bannister an’ Calder an’ a’, leaving the gangway down on the lee-side. It would ha’ been a flyin’ in the face o’ manifest Providence to overlook the invitation. We were within fifty yards o’ her while Kinloch was garmin’ me all over wi’ oil behind the galley; an’ as we ran past I went outboard for the salvage o’ three hunder thousand pound. Man, it was perishin’ cold, but I’d done my job judgmatically, an’ came scrapin’ all along her side slap on to the lower gratin’ o’ the gangway. No one more astonished than me, I assure ye. Before I’d caught my breath I’d skinned both my knees on the gratin’, an’ was climbin’ up before she rolled again. I made my line fast to the rail, an’ squattered aft to young Bannister’s cabin, whaaur I dried me wi’ everything in his bunk, an’ put on every conceivable sort o’ rig I found till the blood was circulatin’. Three pair drawers, I mind I found—to begin upon—an’ I needed them all. It was the coldest cold I remember in all my experience. “Syne I went aft to the engine-room. The _Grotkau_ sat on her own tail, as they say. She was vara shortshafted, an’ her gear was all aft. There was four or five foot o’ water in the engine-room slummockin’ to and fro, black an’ greasy; maybe there was six foot. The stoke-hold doors were screwed home, an’ the stoke-hold was tight enough, but for a minute the mess in the engine-room deceived me. Only for a minute, though, an’ that was because I was not, in a manner o’ speakin’, as calm as ordinar’. I looked again to mak’ sure. ’T was just black wi’ bilge: dead watter that must ha’ come in fortuitously, ye ken.” “McPhee, I’m only a passenger,” I said, “but you don’t persuade me that six foot o’ water can come into an engine-room fortuitously.” “Who’s tryin’ to persuade one way or the other?” McPhee retorted. “I’m statin’ the facts o’ the case—the simple, natural facts. Six or seven foot o’ dead watter in the engine-room is a vara depressin’ sight if ye think there’s like to be more comin’; but I did not consider that such was likely, and so, yell note, I was not depressed.” “That’s all very well, but I want to know about the water,” I said. “I’ve told ye. There was six feet or more there, wi’ Calder’s cap floatin’ on top.” “Where did it come from?” “Weel, in the confusion o’ things after the propeller had dropped off an’ the engines were racin’ an’ a’, it’s vara possible that Calder might ha’ lost it off his head an’ no troubled himself to pick it up again. I remember seem’ that cap on him at Southampton.” “I don’t want to know about the cap. I’m asking where the water came from and what it was doing there, and why you were so certain that it wasn’t a leak, McPhee?” “For good reason—for good an’ sufficient reason.” “Give it to me, then.”