Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/222

 rattle and shriek of winch-engines and the far-off muffled roar of the whistle, rumbling its triumph of returning life. Already the great propeller engines themselves had been tested, after their weeks of idleness, languidly stretching and moving like an awakening sleeper, slowly swinging their solemn tons forward through their projected cycles and then as solemnly back again.

About this vast pyramid-shaped machinery, galleried like a Latin house-court, tremulous with the breath of life that sang and hissed through its veins, the new greaser could see his fellow workers with their dripping oil-cans, groping gallery by gallery up towards the square of daylight that sifted down into the oil-scented pit where he stood. He could see his pale-eyed friend, the fourth engineer, spanner in hand, clinging to a moving network of steel like a spider to its tremulous web—and in his breast, for the first time, a latent respect for that youth awakened. He could see other greasers wriggling about between intricate shafts and wheels, crawling