Dan Sullivan, partly sobered, fired his boiler, showing ugly readiness for a fight. Larry, stoking next to him, kept a weather-eye constantly on his fellow-laborer.
Neville's men had been on duty only a few minutes when the engineer came to the end of the passage and called Larry.
"That's right," Dan growled; "run along, you engineer's pet, leavin' your work for me to do!"
Larry gave him no answer as he hurried away.
"Make fast any loose thing you see here," Neville ordered.
Larry went about the machinery-crowded room securing every object that a lurching ship might send flying from its place. When he returned to the fire-room he heard the water-tender shouting:
"Sullivan, you're loafin' on your job! Get more fire under that boiler!"
"An' ain't I doin' double work, with that damn Mouse forever sneakin' up to the engine-room?"
Larry, giving no sign that he had heard Dan's growling answer, drove his scoop into the coal, and with a swinging thrust spread its heaped load evenly over the glowing bed in the fire-box. He closed the fire-door with a quick slam, for in a pitching boiler-room burning coal can fall from an open furnace as suddenly as new coal can be thrown into it.
"So, you're back," Dan sneered. "It's a wonder you wouldn't stay the watch up there with your betters."
"Soft, ain't it, you jellyfish, havin' me do your job? You eel, you--." Dan poured out a stream of abusive oaths.
"Dan's ravin' mad," a man on the port boilers said. "Will he soak the Mouse to-night, I wonder."
"Sure," the stoker beside him answered. "An' it's a dirty shame for a big devil like him to smash the little un."
"You're new on this ship; you don't know 'em. The Mouse is a regular mother to that booze-fighter, an' small thanks he gets. But wait, an' you'll see somethin' in a minute."
Dan's temper, however, was not yet at fighting heat. He glared a moment longer at Larry, then turned sullenly to his boiler. He was none too steady on his legs, and this, with the lurching of the ship, made his work ragged. After a few slipshod passes he struck the door-frame squarely with his scoop, spilling the coal to the floor.
"Damn your squint eyes!" he yelled. "You done that, Mouse! You shoved ag'in' me. Now scrape it all up, an' be quick about it!"