Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/345

 "What 's your theory?" I demanded.

"Weel, I 'm inclined to think it was one o' those singular providences that remind us we 're in the hands o' Higher Powers."

"It could n't open and shut itself?"

"'I did not mean that; but some half-starvin' oiler or, maybe, trimmer must ha' opened it awhile to mak' sure o' leavin' the Grotkau. It 's a demoralisin' thing to see an engine-room flood up after any accident to the gear—demoralisin' and deceptive both. Aweel, the man got what he wanted, for they went aboard the liner cryin' that the Grotkau was sinkin'. But it 's curious to think o' the consequences. In a' human probability, he 's bein' damned in heaps at the present moment aboard another tramp freighter; an' here am I, wi' five-an'-twenty thousand pound invested, resolute to go to sea no more—providential 's the preceese word—except as a passenger, ye 'll understand, Janet."

McPhee kept his word. He and Janet went for a voyage as passengers in the first-class saloon. They paid seventy pounds for their berths; and Janet found a very sick woman in the second-class saloon, so that for sixteen days she lived below, and chatted with the stewardesses at the foot of the second-saloon stairs while her patient slept. McPhee was a passenger for exactly twenty-four hours. Then the engineers' mess—where the oilcloth tables are—joyfully took him to its bosom, and for the rest of the voyage that company was richer by the unpaid services of a highly certificated engineer.