AT THE CHANGE OF WATCH.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9431, 1 June 1896, Page 3

AT THE CHANGE OF WATCH.

By G. Hawlky.

Onr steamer had just cleared Singapore. My duty in the engine-room was done, and I was sitting with the mate on the bridge watching the downward sweep of the tropic dusk. "It puts mc in nvnd of a theatre sunset," he was saying; " they always go by the run. And that was a pretty theatrical bit you had in the engine-room," he said to my chief, who had joined us. We had found all the nuts but-one off the connecting-rod head ; had another half txirn been made our engines would have been a scrap heap. " Only once has it happened before," said my chief, " and there was a grand tableau, as you call it, bat not in the engine-room. Our stem and two wall-eyed junks were the actors. It was up there," jerking his head northwards. " There was uothing but a thousand odd miles of water and a dusting of islands between us and Hongkong." The mate held a lighted match to the chiefs pipe, and set him drifting on with the current of his yarn. " You see it was years and years ago, and I was second in a local boat—Hongkong to to Yokohama. We were the first to employ China firemen. We had been repairing and and had put on a fresh crowd, all except one, IA Chin. It was near monsoon time, and the second day out we were sitting, as we might be here ; but there was no sunset on view. It had been hazy all day, and we were watching the moon rising; just past full, it looked as if someone had bashed one side off the true. It got up through the haze, big and blood-red, like a fire balloon at old Cremorne. A mean, swaggering swell had set in, so oily that it had no more go to it than the slush in a greasar'a bucket. We were all pretty well hipped and morose, being company for no one except the sea, and that—well, that looked as if it wanted to be sick and couldn't. Li Chin, who was decent for a heathen, was in charge below. My chief was sitting on the rails, and somehow he went over the side. You know pretty well how things like that galvanise everybody. Lose him ? No. The oily swell saved" him, for the old man ran the boat straight back in her own wake, which was marked out like a dusty road at night through a hilly country. Well, we came to where he was yelling, and c;ot him out. By all law, the old man ought to have got into a splutter, but instead of that he said. 'Look here, Mr Gamwell'—that was my chief's name—• I knew something had to happen in this cockeyed no-side-up looking weather, but I don't believe this is the only thing to-night.' "And we all said together, 'That's just what I was thinking, sir, , as they do at church when the pai-son pipes out. "Then send her ahead again and let's get it done with," he said. "Give her steam, Li Chin, , I shouted down the skylight. Li Chin looked up and chittered, 'Hi ! no talkee talkee: come chop chop.' So I went down to him. " I was pretty green in those days, and whatever came within a hairs-breadth of happening made mc feel as squeamish as if it had come off. Of course, you grow out of that, but then I felt my hair creep. Our high pressure connecting rod was on the down throw with only a single nut on. She had the old style of engines, remember, and when they went on a burst they went handsomely, no tinkering up; new engines, perhaps new ship; may be even new hands. However, we began to screw up, at least the chief did; he'd only new hands. Presently he shoved a nut under my nose: " That your trade mark ?" he asked. The nut was chipped and scribed with bad spanner marks, which I repudiated. "In what followed I can never quite settle Li Chin's share in the programme. This was how we were after we had fixed all tight again :—Li Chin was leaning through the eccentric rods with the lamp; I was half in, half out, the crank pit, and the chief was at my back. He had the spanner. All in a breath he dragged mc backwards, flat, my head cracking on the plates, and I saw the spanner go ' spit' through the standards. It didn't hit any metal, but something soft. Then he clapped his hand on my face and mc stone tight, and something came down and rubbed by'my chesty scratching me—noinore^-atidthrough his fingers I could just see the crank moving, but it had passed mc. If anyone believes that engines haven't souls, just you stick him in the crank pit, and let her go, only dead slow and juet to clear him. That converted mc. " He dragged mc right out, hissing in my ear, ' Whip up on deck ; tell 'em to shoot on 3ight any who leave the stoke-hole.' He slammed the iron door 'tween the boilers and us and turned on Li Chin, who was still holding the lamp, and had him by the throat before he could finish, 'No bobbery, all samee white man.' Aβ I jumped past the 3tarting platform I saw one of the new atokers lying on hia back, his face a thing of horror. That was the soft thing the spanner bit, and you know what size a connecting rod takes. " Both mates and the old man were on the bridge watching something ahead. All in a sweat I sang out my message, and the old man never asked why or wherefore, but popped in the chartroom and slipped a revolver in the second mate's hand, saying come to us, then.' The mate didn ? t move, so the old man yelped at him. ' Why i'ye stand there, Mac ? Are you whitelivered?' " Now Mac was a Greenock man, and he said 4 Y' ken, sir, I want orders frae you, and I'll shoot your am brother,' just in a ijuiet and matter-of-fact way. And, Scott! he would. I know them. "' Shoot anything that comes out of the stoke-hole," said the old man, and Mac slid along, whistling soft and quiet, to his station. Yes, that was it, ' Annie Laurie;' but it wasn't for her that he laid down and died. Poor Mac; he got sand-bagged at New Orleans over a chit of a Yankee girl not fit to black his boots. ; "The old man grabbed mc by the arm. •Look here,' he said, pointing out three, sails wallowing along between us : and the moon. • That's the little game your friends below are after. Their friends are coming to join in. And, by thunder, so is pur stem !' He turned on the chief mate like a, flash. «You jump down with Mac into the stoke-hole, and make every pig-tailed heathen stoke her up to the blow-off. Wipe 'em out if they've any lip. Scoot! , " He was tramping up and down like a terror. I never dreamt that a man with a wife and family could have looked such a demon.

" ' You,' he cried to mc, 'jump below and don't let the engines move a hand's breadth till I ring her. Then let her rip.' "I went below the skylight and told the chief from there ; I didn't care .to pass that thing on the platform again. And'besides, I wanted to see what was going to happen. I was all on the jump, like a white-faced girl; so I stayed looking out. The steamer was wallowing in the trough like a lame duck. All the crew had turned out forward after fixing up the turned-in China firemen. The three junks came on in a-line abreast down the wind. There was a heathenish feeling about everything—that red, lop sided moon making a big crawly snake on the oily water ; the three junks sidling along, and us laid silent. There were three things I remember: the slap of the water under our stern, the. rattle of the junks' sails flapping against their masts, and our old man's fist; he was pounding time on the rail. Then she began to blow off. j "All at once he roared out, 'Port, bard a-port 1' and rang her full-speed, and we i began to move. Lord ! in three minutes we had got our pace. "The junks had turned after us at first, but they seemed to guess something was wrong, for one sheered of£ Presently we'd done the half-circle and headed stem on to the other two. Then I reckoned they realised. The first broke out into lights and shouts; she was right under our bows, and you could hear her split like, dry firewood. Her big battened mainsail rattled on our. foc'sle head like a shower of canes. The sea itself seemed to yell all round us as we steamed through the cargo of drowning pirates. I looked over the rail; we'd hit the other and smashed one side off, and, as we pranced by, I saw her men sliding off her deck like a spilt cart-load "of turnips as she heeled over. Her masts caught our afterboat and tore it away. Then she beamended and slumped. After hitting the.first junk, the old man had been ramping up and down the deck like a mad fellow. The third junk had got some distance away, but it was no use ; after her we went, our old man roaring and shaking bis fist at her; then all at once he quieted, and conned us like a Thames steamboat skipper. And we hit that junk oleaa in the stern, and rode over '

her from end to end. It was sickening to to see the struggle in our wake; I ran and asked him if we wern't going to save some of them. He knocked mc clean off my feet. I was silly for more than ten minutes, and when I pulled together we were still running ahead.

" My chief was binding up my head, and the old man was staring astern. All at once he screamed, 'Lord, what have I done !' and chucked up his arms and fell back. He never spoke more, but went out next morning. We made the heathens stoke us back to Hongkong—and gaol. I went to hospital completely knocked over.

"You know Aberdeen? Yes, well you know that old house against the Town Hall —an eating honse; his widow keeps that show, and if ever you're stuck up say as you know one who sailed with him. And if

you're flush " — Black and White.