The delay, the disorder, the cruel extra work on stokers, not to mention the engineers, who at all times are worked pitilessly, is in Peace no more than merely brutal. In war it would be dangerous.
As if that were not enough, the swell that the battleships logged as light (Heaven forgive them!) began to heave our starboard screw out of the water. We raced and we raced and we raced, dizzily, thunderously, paralytically, hysterically, vibrating all down one side. It was, of course, in our four hours of full speed that the sea most delighted to lift us up on one finger and watch us kick. From 6 to 10 p.m. one screw twizzled for the most part in the circumambient ether, and the Chief Engineer--with coal-dust and oil driven under his skin--volunteered the information that life in his department was gay. He would have left a white mark on the Assistant-Engineer, whose work lay in the stokehold among a gang of new Irish stokers. Never but once have I been in our engine-rooms; and I do not go again till I can take with me their designer for four hours at full speed. The place is a little cramped and close, as you might say. A steel guard, designed to protect men from a certain toothed wheel round the shaft, shore through its bolts and sat down, much as a mudguard sits down on a bicycle-wheel. But the wheel it sat on was also of steel; spinning one hundred and ninety revolutions per minute. So there were fireworks, beautiful but embarrassing, of incandescent steel sparks, surrounding the Assistant-Engineer as with an Aurora Borealis. They turned the hose on the display, and at last knocked the guard sideways, and it fell down somewhere under the shaft, so that they were at liberty to devote their attention to the starboard thrust-block, which was a trifle loose. Indeed, they had been trying to wedge the latter when the fireworks began--all up their backs.
The thing that consoled them was the thought that they had not slowed down one single turn.
'She's a giddy little thing,' said the Chief Engineer. 'Come down and have a look.'
I declined in suitable language. Some day, when I know more, I will write about engine-rooms and stokers' accommodation--the manners and customs of Naval Engineers and their artificers. They are an amazing breed, these quiet, rather pale men, in whose hands lie the strength and power of the ship.