bearing for almost ten minutes, testing it with the palm of his hand,
feeling for heat or vibration. His expression was morose, and he
worried the mint humbug in his cheek and shook his head with foreboding
We are going on up the tunnel.
When he reached the main gland, he squatted down suddenly and peered at
it closely. With a deliberate fle of his jaw he crushed the remains of
the humbug between his teeth, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
There was a thin trickle of seawater oozing through the gland and
running down into the bilges. The Chief touched it with his finger.
Something had shifted, some balance was disturbed, the seal of the gland
was no longer watertight - such a small sign, a few gallons of seawater,
could be the first warning of major structural damage.
The Chief shuffled around, still hunched down beside the shaft bed, and
he lowered his face until it was only inches from the spinning steel
main shaft. He closed one eye, and cocked his head, trying once again
to decide if the faint blurring of the shaft's outline was real or
merely his over-active imagination, whether what he was seeing was
distortion or his own fears.
Suddenly, startlingly, the shaft slammed into stillness.
The deceleration was so abrupt that the Chief could actually see the
torque transferred into the shaft bed, and the metal walls creaked and
popped with the strain.
He rocked back on to his heels, and almost instantly the shaft began to
spin again, but this time in reverse thrust.
The whine built up swiftly into a rising shriek. They were Pulling
emergency power from the bridge, and it was madness, suicidal madness.
The Chief seized the oiler by the shoulder and shouted into his ear, Get
back to control - find out what the hell they are doing on the bridge.
The oiler scrambled away down the tunnel; it would take him ten minutes
to negotiate the long narrow passage, open the watertight doors and
reach the control room and as long again to return.
The Chief considered going after him, but somehow he could not leave the
shaft now. He lowered his head again, and now he could clearly see the
flickering outline of the shaft. It wasn't imagination at all, there
was a little ghost of movement. He clamped his hands over his ears to
cut out the painful shriek of the spinning metal, but there was a new
note to it, the squeal of bare metal on metal and before his eyes he saw
the ghost outline along the edge of the shaft growing, the flutter of
machinery out of balance, and the metal deck under his feet began to
quiver.
God! They are going to blow the whole thing! he shouted, and jumped up
from his crouch. Now the deck was juddering and shaking under his feet.
He started back along the shaft, but the entire tunnel was agitating so
violently that he had to grab the metal bulkhead to steady himself, and
he reeled drunkenly, thrown about like a captive insect in a cruel
child's box.
Ahead of him, he saw the huge metal casting of the main bearing twisting
and shaking, and the vibration chattered his teeth in his clenched jaw
and drove up his spine like a jack hammer.
