Page:Cruise of the Dry Dock.djvu/261

 “Why you can tell an engineer easily,” he murmured. “You've seen 'em, oily fellows, with black smudges.”

“That describes a fireman, too.”

“No, a fireman's not so oily and is more cindery—then we'll know one by his cap.”

“Certainly,” breathed Smith. “I hadn't thought of that.”

Notwithstanding his danger, Madden could not help smiling as he moved along after the fashion of a careless stroller, when he was really keenly alert for a man with an engineer's cap.

The two youths were walking up a long deck, dimly lighted by small incandescent bulbs placed on the inner surface of the outside stanchions about thirty feet apart. Each bulb was carefully blinded from the ocean by a sheath, which confined its glowworm radiance exclusively to the promenade. On the inboard side were a long series of port holes, likewise hooded from observation. Some were aglow, others dark.

The deck, rails, cabin walls, ports, hoods, joists of the top-deck were newly washed and scrupulously clean. Fifty yards up-deck, where