"BREAD UPON THE WATERS"
thousand pound. Man, it was perishin' cold, but I 'd done my job judgmatically, an' came scrapin' all along her side slap on to the lower gratin' o' the gangway. No one more astonished than me, I assure ye. Before I 'd caught my breath I 'd skinned both my knees on the gratin', an' was climbin' up before she rolled again. I made my line fast to the rail, an' squattered aft to young Bannister's cabin, whaur I dried me wi' everything in his bunk, an' put on every conceivable sort o' rig I found till the blood was circulatin'. Three pair drawers, I mind I found—to begin upon—an' I needed them all. It was the coldest cold I remember in all my experience.
"Syne I went aft to the engine-room. The Grotkau sat on her own tail, as they say. She was vara short-shafted, an' her gear was all aft. There was four or five foot o' water in the engine-room sliunmockin' to and fro, black an' greasy; maybe there was six foot. The stoke-hold doors were screwed home, an' the stoke-hold was tight enough, but for a minute the mess in the engine-room deceived me. Only for a minute, though, an' that was because I was not, in a manner o' speakin', as calm as ordinar'. I looked again to mak' sure. 'T was just black wi' bilge: dead watter that must ha' come in fortuitously, ye ken."
"McPhee, I 'm only a passenger," I said, "but you don't persuade me that six foot o' water can come into an engine-room fortuitously."
"Who 's tryin' to persuade one way or the other?" McPhee retorted. "I 'm statin' the facts o' the case—the simple, natural facts. Six or seven foot o' dead
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