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Show B "RA VO, BLACK SQUAD" B A, Vivid Pen Picture of Life In the Engine-Room B of a Dreadnought in Action. H "Clang!" B The ueil of tho engine-room telegraph rings B out loudly and insistently, and the engineer B glances at It shartply. But smart as has been B his action, that of the engine-room artificer has B been smarter, and before the words "'Full speed B ahead" pass the engineer's lips, the throttle Is B half-way opened. B Ting-allng aling! This time it is a telephone B bell which is clamoring for attention, and a B stoker launches himself across the slippery plates B at the instrument. He listens for a moment, fl then: H "Shut down, sir," he reports to the engl- B neer. B The officer repeats tho order, and almost im- B mediately the various indicators are telling the B four stokeholes to "Close all water-tight doors." fl The battle has commenced. H Let us, as a matter of interest, imagine that B we are in the engine-room of a modern Dread- H nought in action. On each side of us, unobtrus- M ively stowed away in their mahogany brassbound H cases, are the great turbines. Their humming M though we cannot see them fills the vast space B with the sound as of a million bees let loose. B Near each one hovers a grimy stoker, oil-can in H hand, and his duty it is to see that these monster Hr humming-tops do not lack for lubrication. Hp Right in front, on the foremost bulkhead of B the engine-room, are the telegraph dials and the M telephones, each of which is connected with the B' bridge, and under the direct control of the cap- K tain. These are the things which tell us how the B fight is going, for the keen engineer can read Bi signs and portens in the changes which are rung H upon the telegraph dials. HI A tremendous thing is the fighting strain. It B is bad even up in the great turret where men B play their parts in the grim drama, and hurl B death and destruction at the foe, but down here, B where one does nothing but wait for orders, it is B terrible. Every time the big guns fire one can B, feel the ship quiver, and one can also hear the B "thud-thud" of the enemy's shells as they strike B the ship. H, The only man who does not seem to feel the Hp strain is the one who has apparently least to W do, and that is the engineer. He, however, is w 'busily doing mental arithmetic. He knows how V many revolutions his screws are doing per min- Hjj ute, and he realizes that as yet she still has a H little bit of speed up her sleeve. m He has just received a private hint from the H bridge that she's doing all that is necessary at B present; that she is holding the enemy, and keep- B 'ing her well within range. B By and by that last half knot may be asked B for, and he is calculating how much speed he B will be able to present to the captain when that B final effort is asked for. No one knows but he, and he won't tell. " There seems to be a kind of waiting expression expres-sion on most of the faces, and if they could tell you what they were all waiting for it would surprise sur-prise you. Shut up as they are in a small steel boxful of machinery, they are not thinking of the chance of an enemy's projectile coming through and killing them, nor are they waiting for death to come to them in some other manner. What they are dreading is that something should go wrong with their beloved engines something that would prevent their "doing their bit" in this fight. They are listening ever listening for the hiss of escaping steam which will tell them of a main steam pipe hit and carried away; for the shot that might smash one of the boilers into small pieces; for the rattle of the steering engine as the rudder is iblown away, and the ship hangs, without a guide, in the balance. And then, with a sickening sidelong twist and a rattdle of the steering engine, the floor of the engine-room takes en a sickening slant. The ship has made a sudden sud-den and acute turn. The engineer's face turns from cheery optimistic opti-mistic red to a fear-stricken sallow green. "My God!" he mutters. "Submarines!" Every man in that engine-room and every stoker in the stokeholds knows what that sudden and horrible twist means. It means that the ship has commenced a quadrille with death; that underwater craft are seeking to end her life and the fight at the same time. Hard a port. Hard a starboard. Amidships for a second, then hard over again. The helm seems to be possessed. And at every movement the deck of the engine-room slants this way and that as the giant rudder presses against the water and brings the ship round "on the heel," as they say in the navy. The strained look has gone now. Every one is eager and anxious to do but one thing, and that is to obey the orders which come down from the bridge as fast as they possibly can be obeyed. The bridge is having an anxious time, but men in the depths trust it and reckon it up to dealing with the biggest flotilla of submarines sub-marines that their foe owns, any day. Then, while the ship is running all she knows, the unexpected happens. With a louder and more sudden roar than ever the steering engine rattles over to hard a port. At precisely the same second the telegraph rings "Full astern starboard engine. Full ahead port." The ship takes a horrible heel as the rudders two of them grip her; the port screw slows down perceptibly percept-ibly as it feels the mighty column of water deflected, de-flected, from the rudder, and the starboard one hums along smoothly as it feels the reversed turbine's thrust. And even as they spin round, the men can hear tho guns putting in good work and blazing away for all they are worth. Ten minutes later the enemy's fleet or what are left of them are steaming for harbor again as fast as they can go. Imagine yourself shut up in a chattering, humming hum-ming steel box, with the odds on being killed, either by shell or torpedo explosion, or drowning, or scalding to death, and with Death himself throwing all sorts of missiles at you which you can't even see coming, and you will have a very good idea of what being in a battleship's engine-room engine-room is like in a real pitched battle. |