of metal rubbed smoothly against each other, slow and gentle, in a
commingling of shadows and gleams.

Sometimes all those powerful and unerring movements would slow down
simultaneously, as if they had been the functions of a living organism,
stricken suddenly by the blight of languor; and Mr. Rout's eyes would
blaze darker in his long sallow face. He was fighting this fight in a
pair of carpet slippers. A short shiny jacket barely covered his loins,
and his white wrists protruded far out of the tight sleeves, as though
the emergency had added to his stature, had lengthened his limbs,
augmented his pallor, hollowed his eyes.

He moved, climbing high up, disappearing low down, with a restless,
purposeful industry, and when he stood still, holding the guard-rail in
front of the starting-gear, he would keep glancing to the right at the
steam-gauge, at the water-gauge, fixed upon the white wall in the light
of a swaying lamp. The mouths of two speaking-tubes gaped stupidly at his
elbow, and the dial of the engine-room telegraph resembled a clock of
large diameter, bearing on its face curt words instead of figures. The
grouped letters stood out heavily black, around the pivot-head of the
indicator, emphatically symbolic of loud exclamations: AHEAD, ASTERN,
SLOW, Half, STAND BY; and the fat black hand pointed downwards to the
word FULL, which, thus singled out, captured the eye as a sharp cry
secures attention.

The wood-encased bulk of the low-pressure cylinder, frowning portly from
above, emitted a faint wheeze at every thrust, and except for that
low hiss the engines worked their steel limbs headlong or slow with a
silent, determined smoothness. And all this, the white walls, the moving
steel, the floor plates under Solomon Rout's feet, the floors of