Walker, in his brief catalogue of occupations, had suppressed one. To

make sure, Christobal closed a water-tight bulkhead door which cut off

the principal staterooms from the saloon. Then he and his two helpers

carried out a painful but necessary task. It was his duty to certify

whether or not life was extinct. There were very few exceptions. The

three men lifted the bodies and threw them overboard. When they reached

the corpses of the second officer and a Spanish engineer who had been

knifed in the defense of the jolly-boat--his comrade had scrambled into

one of the life-boats--Tollemache took possession of such money,

documents, and valuables as were in their pockets, intending to draw up

an inventory when an opportunity presented itself.

Though they knew not the moment when a sickening crash would herald the

final dissolution of the ship, they proceeded with their work

methodically. In half an hour they had reached the end. All the injured

men--seven nondescript sailors and firemen--were carried to the saloon

and placed under Christobal's care. Walker dived below to the

engine-room, where he had already disconnected the rods broken or bent by

the fracture of a guard ring, which, in its turn, was injured by the

blowing out of a junk-ring, a stout ring of forged steel secured to one

of the pistons. He could do nothing more on deck. Whether he was

destined to live fifty seconds or as many years he was ill content to

hear his beloved engines knocking themselves to pieces with each roll of

the ship.

Tollemache, who undertook the firing of the donkey-boiler, which was

situated on the main deck aft of the saloon--for the Kansas was built

chiefly to accommodate cargo--during his wanderings round the world had

picked up sufficient knowledge of steam-power to shovel fuel into the

furnace and regulate the water-level by the feed valve and pump. The

small engine, more reliable and quite as powerful as a hundred men, was

in perfect order. It abounded in valves and taps, but Walker's parting

instructions were explicit: "Keep yo' eye on the glass, an' pitch in a shovel of coal evewy ten

minutes: she'll do the west."

So the new hand, satisfied that the gage was correct and the furnace

lively, lit his pipe, sat down, and began to jot in a note-book the

contents of his coat-pockets. The Spaniard's letters he could not read,

though he gathered that one of them was from a wife in Vallodolid, who

would travel overland early in January to meet her husband. But the

Englishman's correspondence was terribly explicit. A "heart-broken

mother" wrote from Liverpool that "Jack" had been shot during one of the

many cold-weather campaigns on the Indian frontier. "I have no news,

simply a telegram from the War Office. But of what avail to know how my

darling died. My tears are blinding me. You and I alone are left, and

you are thousands of miles away. May the Lord be merciful to me, a

widow, and bring you home to comfort me." Yet the knife which killed him

must have gone very near that letter.




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