"I suppose I ought to have been downhearted at being so ignorant and dirty and tired, but I wasn't in the least. It was too interesting. There was a grim irony, to me, in the appalling contrast between the behaviour of that worn-out dynamo and the smug theory in the text-books and trade catalogues I had been used to so long. I had read of the way to detect faults in a circuit, but it seemed to me there was no need to look for faults on the _Corydon_; it was the virtues, the sound places, that needed looking for. And yet, strange to say, out of her decrepitude loyalty was born. I found it growing on me day by day, a jealous regard for her, the pity that becomes a sort of cantankerous affection.
"But to go on with that day, we crossed the bar. It was high water at four in the afternoon and I had to go down again to stand by the telegraph. With my head against the reversing engine wheel I could feel the slow vibration of the anchor coming up, and hear the sough of the exhaust coming back from the windlass. The Second and old Croasan stood near by, their faces blank with waiting and fatigue, like the faces of dead men. Old Croasan's eyelid would flicker now and then and the tip of his tongue would move stealthily round the inside of his lips. He hadn't shaved for several days and his face was vague and venerable, glistening grey bristles. When he leaned gently against the vice-bench and folding his arms, closed his eyes, he looked like a hundred-years'-old corpse. He closed his eyes. It was not interesting to him, this crossing of the bar.
"Suddenly we got an order, and we started. I went along the tunnel to see the bearings were all oiled, and while I stood in the dark gloom at the far end, with my hand on the dribbling stern-gland, there came a sudden thump and a grinding shock. The turning shaft shook and chattered before my eyes, the propeller outside caught in something, shuddered, broke clear and beat like a flail. Then the ship lifted bodily and fell, bump, bump, bump. I stood there transfixed. What could it be? I looked along the dark tunnel to where the lights of the engine-room showed in a pale glint and I could have sworn I saw the whole bag of tricks move slowly up and subside as the keel floundered across that ridge of mud and soft rock. She must be breaking in half, I thought. I had heard of such things. I gathered myself up and hurried back to the engine-room, where I found everybody perfectly calm. The ship, it appeared, was now on the bar and it was our business to keep the engines going at full speed until she was gradually urged over. At intervals she bumped. Some mass of rock or clay on which she rested would collapse and immediately the propeller would shove her a little further over. Our vacuum almost disappeared, for the injection pipe got blocked with mud. This meant more work for me in starting the ballast pump, and when that got choked too, I had to open it up and clean the valve-boxes. It didn't seem to matter what happened, there was a new job for me. I wondered with a sort of temporary bitterness whether they would miss me if I dropped suddenly dead. And I was obliged to admit to myself that in all probability they wouldn't. They would just go ahead and do the job themselves and bury me when they got through.