But I must not stray into the fighting line of engineering--I have said, perhaps, more than enough on that subject recently. Nevertheless, I honestly believe that I have only been able to put in the tamest and most colourless way what I feel about these men. When I say that such a chapter as this should be written by an engineer, I mean that only an expert in the wonderful profession can fully appreciate the difficulties and dangers thereof. Outsiders may, as I do, admire and wonder, but we cannot fully enter into these things as an engineer can. The country badly needs a writer on engineering matters who knows his business thoroughly, and at the same time is able to tell the people who don't know, what marine engineering means. No amount of sympathy and admiration can make up for lack of expert knowledge, yet, as far as it is possible, I feel constrained to draw the attention of my countrymen to the work of the men who, far below the water-line, amid the clanging chorus of their gigantic slaves, bend watchful brows to their mighty task; who for the four hours of their watch on deck (see how the sailor crops up), no, their watch below at work, know not one moment's respite. Vigilance unremitting is theirs; the price of effective manipulation must be paid, for no eastern Afrit was ever more jealous of the power over him held by the enunciator of the master-word than is the high-pressure marine engine of the governance of the engineer. The casual observer, glancing down into the engine-room of a sea-going steamer, is apt to imagine that the men who wait upon the engines have an easy time of it. He is inclined to think that once the engines are started--"full speed ahead" sounded--watch after watch need only sit and look at them doing their work. Nothing could well be more false, while nothing is more natural. For engineers, like the best workmen everywhere and of every sort, make no fuss about their work. Quietly, without ostentation, they tend their engines, their trained ears noting the faintest change of tone in the uproar which sounds so chaotic to the ear of the outsider. Every single part of those engines, the amount of strain that it is bearing, the need for nursing, lubricating, watching that it has, is in the mind of that quiet, nonchalant man who steps cat-like into the thick of the flying steel cranks, and accommodating his movements to the swing of the thrusting shafts, feels their temperature, the amount of lubricant they are carrying, and regains his perforated platform with an air of indifference as if he had merely looked over the side on deck, instead of having been on the most intimate terms with an unspeakable form of death.