Free The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes Page A

there was the hissing sound of steam escaping, so that the place seemed no longer dead. In my haste I let go at the bottom of the last ladder and was pitched a dozen feet across the engine-room deck, fetching up against a steel rail. There was a prolonged hiss of steam as I stood there, gasping for breath, and the pistons moved, thrusting their arms against the gleaming metal of the crankshaft, turning it—slowly at first, and then faster and faster so that all the metal parts gleamed in the light of my torch and the engines took on that steady, reassuring thump-thump of vitality and power. The hum of a dynamo started and the lights began to glow. The humming became louder, the lights brighter, and then abruptly they snapped full on. Brass and steelwork gleamed. The whole lit cavern of the engine-room was alive with sound.
    Patch was standing on the engineer officer’s control platform. I staggered down the catwalk between the two big reciprocators. ‘The engines!’ I shouted at him. ‘The engines are going!’ I was beside myself with excitement. For that one moment I thought we could steam straight into a port.
    But he was already shutting off the steam, and the beat of the engines slowed and then stopped with a final hiss. ‘Don’t stand there,’ he said to me. ‘Start stoking. We want all the steam we can get.’ For the first time he looked like a man in control of the situation.
    But stoking was more difficult now; dangerous, too. The movements of the ship were unpredictable. One moment I would be flinging a shovelful of coal high up against the thrust of gravity, the next I would be pitched towards the flaming mouth of the furnace and the coal would seem to have no weight at all as it left the shovel.
    I don’t know how long I was working there alone before he joined me. It seemed a long time. I didn’t see him enter. All my mind was concentrated on the coal and that gaping furnace door, concentrated on gauging the pitch of the ship, avoiding being flung against the red-hot fire. I felt a hand on my arm and I looked up to find him standing over me. I straightened up and faced him, panting, with the sweat pouring off my body. ‘I’ve got the pumps going,’ he said.
    I nodded, too short of breath to waste it in speech.
    â€˜I’ve just been up to the bridge,’ he went on. ‘Half the time the bows are right under. Any moment that bulkhead may go. Do you think you could hear the engine-room telegraph from in here?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I expect so.’
    He took me through into the engine-room then and showed me the engine controls and the voice pipe that connected with the bridge. ‘I’ll go up to the bridge now,’ he said. ‘You go back to the boiler-room and start stoking. I’ll give you a ring on the engine-room telegraph. If you don’t hear it after two minutes come to the voice pipe. Okay?’
    I nodded and he went clambering up the ladder, whilst I returned to the stoke-hold. Even in that short time my arms and back had stiffened. I had to force myself to start shovelling again. I was beginning to get very tired and I wondered how long we could keep this up. Faint above the roar of the furnace and the sounds of the engine-room came the jangling of the bridge telegraph. I flung the furnace door to and went through to the engineers’ control platform. The pointer stood at Full Ahead. I spun the control wheel, opening up the steam valves, and for the first time I understood the thrill and pride an engineer officer must feel; the hiss of steam, the pistons moving and the engines taking up a steady, pulsating beat, vibrant with power. The heart of the ship had come alive, and it was I who had made it alive. It was satisfying.
    Back in the stoke-hold the shovel felt strangely light. I barely noticed the aching of my arms. Confidence and the will to fight back had returned. I was suddenly