In the narrow stoke-hold, lit up by the ruddy glare of the furnace fires, the light from which enabled me to see the brackish bilge water washing about beneath the hole in the flooring and gurgling up through the broken portplates there, I saw that a group of half-naked firemen, and others, were bending over a pile of empty coal sacks heaped up against the further bulkhead, dividing the occupied apartments from the main hold, as far away as possible from the blazing fires, on which one of the stokers on duty pitched occasionally a shovelful of fuel, or smoothed the surface of the glowing embers with a long-toothed rake.

I couldn’t distinguish at first any one in particular, the backs of all being towards me as I came down the slippery steel ladder, carrying the hammock, for I had taken the precaution of hoisting it on my shoulders on leaving the engine-flat above, in order to prevent its getting wet, while the noise of the machinery overhead and the roar of the furnaces, coupled with the washing of the water, prevented my hearing any distant sound.

Presently however, I recognised Garry O’Neil’s voice above the general din.

“Clear off, ye murthorin’ divvles!” he cried, waving his arms above the heads of the crowd of onlookers, as I could now see. “The poor chap wants air, and ye’re stayling the viry br’ith out of his nosshrils! Away wid ye all, ye spalpeens! or by the powers, it’s a-pizening the howl batch of ye I’ll be doin’ the next toime ye comes to me for pill or powdher!”

The men clustering round him spread out, moving nearer to me; and they laughed at his comical threat—which sounded all the more humorous from the Irishman’s racy brogue, which became all the more prominent when Garry was at all excited. God knows, though, their merrimen