Tod nodded. "Yes—he's gone."
"The swine!" The chief struggled to an elbow. A wrench of agony went through him. His teeth bit down on his lower lip.
"Shall I help you to deck?"
The bell jangled behind them. The chief's gaze swept across to the telegraph dial, and Tod Moran's eyes followed his glance. The indicator pointed to Full Astern.
"Help me to deck?" muttered the chief. "Hell! Get me over to those levers."
With the Scotchman's arm thrown over his shoulder, Tod dragged him to his feet. Swaying, lurching, they crossed to the innumerable levers opposite the dial. The chief gripped the handles. He pulled. The engines throbbed; the floor quivered. But the great propeller beat the waves in vain. The even slant to port told them that the Araby still lay on the reef.
"Moran—Moran!" A voice boomed out from the stokehole doorway.
Tod whirled. Jarvis stood gazing round the engine room. "Where's your brother?" he snapped.
"Went down the shaft tunnel," Tod answered loudly.
"Good." The big man apparently took in the situation at a glance. "Chief, you're with us? Yes? . . . Then Joe Macaroni, we got work for you too. Can you keep the fires going—and going strong?"
Tod moved toward the stokehole. "I'll keep them going. Yes, sir—I'll keep them going."
"Get busy." Jarvis sprang with a lithe movement for the ladder.
"The steam's down," called the chief thickly, as he pointed to the gauge. "Hurry."
Tod Moran ran up the plates and into the tunnel. Coming out into the gloom of the stokehole, he picked up a shovel and flung open the door of number three furnace. A white sheet of flame leaped toward him. He jerked to one side with a sharp quiver of apprehension. That almost got him! He swung the door shut with the shovel, opened the draft, and then once more swung the door outward. Thank heavens he had plenty of coal on hand. He plunged the shovel blade beneath the pile and threw it with a long sweep into the fiery mouth. He worked furiously, with but one thought: to feed that ravenous mouth so he might cut off the white heat that scorched his face and naked shoulders. He kept at it steadily with long swinging movements. Furnace doors clanged. The draft roared. The heat and dust increased. With black rivulets of sweat streaming down his glistening body, he worked like mad, stoking first one furnace, then another. Their intermittent clang became a nightmare; against the steel bulkheads of that fiery hole, the echoes beat a sharp tattoo.
What was happening on deck? Were the boats being lowered? Was Sparks trying vainly to drum out calls for help? Or had Mr. Hawkes seen to it that no SOS went winging through the night? And the chief? Was he still standing by his engines, throwing his weight in answer to the telegraph?
With tightened lips Tod Moran kept at his work. His eyes seemed branded by the heat; his breath came in spasmodic jerks. The hot plates of the stokehole burned through his shoes. In the back of his head, a throbbing pain seared deep; his nostrils seemed suffocated. When he opened his mouth in desperate abandon to breathe in the soot-filled air, his throat choked on the dust. Before his swimming vision those fiery Molochs opened jaws with tongues of flame that scorched to a sickening degree. He lost the sense of time.
A sound behind him, barely perceptible, like a soft hiss, just caught his attention. He turned his burning eyes that way. An uncontrollable groundswell of fear pulled at his limbs. Gliding toward him across the hot plates was a small stream of water, hissing as it approached, lifting its head in a faint cloud of steam.
Fascinated, he stared. Until this moment, he had never really fancied that the Araby would sink, that Mr. Hawkes could win out when Jarvis and Neil and he all stood in the way. That the Araby could sink? No—no! It wasn't right; it wasn't fair. Yet here was this water winding toward him across the plates. It wasn't the fact that they had lost that most concerned him; it was the thought of the Araby's death— her end. There was a hole in her side, then; or— and how his heart leaped at the thought!—could it be merely the water from the bilges?
Well, he'd better get to work. Presently, he awoke with a start to the realization that all the coal had been used. For only a moment he hesitated at the black cavernous mouth of the bunkers. He glanced at the shining wet surface of the plates. Steadily the glistening expanse widened. Dared he go into that dark entrance where any sudden movement of the ship might well mean death to him? What! He stopped? He, Joe Macaroni? No—no! If his moment had come he wasn't afraid. Well—he was afraid, but that made no difference. He had promised Jarvis he'd keep the furnaces going. He must have coal, even though he already knew his task as almost futile. He wouldn't waver. He knew what to do!
He plunged into the bunkers. He had no lantern now. He skirted the coal chute, turned to the left down those familiar passages, and stumbled against the barrow. A shovel lay close by. He thrust the blade into the coal. The first shovelful missed, but it gave him the direction, and after that he worked with furious haste.
Abruptly he stopped and listened. A voice was calling from the stokehole. "Joe Macaroni—where are you? Joe Macaroni!"
He picked up the barrow handles and slowly guided it along the plates of the 'tween-decks. Coming down the incline he saw the huge figure of Jarvis silhouetted against the flickering light.
"That's where you are!" He gave Tod a swift glance of affectionate delight. "I knew I didn't guess wrong."
"I needed coal."
The man's eyes gleamed. "Get up on deck. We're leaving."
Tod Moran placed the barrow on the stokehole plates and lifted a blackened face. "The boats?" he stammered. "The end? Then this doesn't matter?"
Jarvis spun about. "The end?" he boomed. "Joe Macaroni, we're just beginning to fight! Get up to the deck. The port lifeboat. You look fagged. Go up through the engine room; it's easier. I'll see you above." Jarvis sprang for the fiddley ladder.
Tod Moran went, unsteadily, toward the engine room. In the tunnel, he awoke to the fact that the engines had stopped. The silence seemed to press upon the walls of steel. For a moment he thought the engine room deserted; then he observed a still form lying beside the levers.
"Chief?"
No answer. The Scotch engineer sat hunched against his engines. His mouth hung open with little trickles of blood at the edges. His eyes stared up at the telegraph dial where the indicator pointed to the word "Finished".
Tod Moran grew rigid. Slowly he advanced. "Chief." He choked on the word. Even as he said it, he knew the chief was dead.
He stepped across the motionless form. He dragged his burning gaze to the ladder. In a daze, he climbed upward. On the middle grating he swung about and went up past the cylinder heads.
About him the silence seemed to pulse and throb. Or was it the beating of his own heart that he heard?
He came out into the alleyway, passed the galley with its warm smell of food, and reached the after ladder leading to the boat deck. Above, he encountered a phantom figure emerging from the darkened wireless shack.
"That you, Sparks?" he murmured. "Did you send an SOS?"
"Couldn't," came the low response. "The dynamo was off and the batteries run down. God! what an outfit."
In the starlight of the deck, Tod discerned figures pressing about the lifeboats. On the poop deck other figures like those in a dream were putting out the captain's gig.
The air was heavy with disaster. Across the clear night voices called. Lanterns flickered vaguely. As in a trance, he reached the port lifeboat, tumbled in, and dropped on a seat near Jarvis. He glimpsed Mr. Hawkes sitting in the sternsheets, giving his orders. Tod looked down at the rounding cleats. Once before he had put to sea in this same boat. That had been upon a night of storm with death in the air. Now they were casting adrift once more, but this time in the stillness between midnight and dawn, with the cold stars winking overhead. They were leaving the Araby for ever.