The first move in the game is the Chief’s, who goes to bed and presumably to sleep.  After that it’s the engine-room move, which gives the first class time to settle down and then shuts off the airpumps.  Now there is no noise about shutting off the air in the trunks.  It flows or it does not flow.  The game is to see whether the Chief wakens when the air stops or does not.  So far he had always wakened.

It was uncanny.  It was worse than that—­it was damnable!  Did not the Old Man sleep at all?—­not that he was old, but every Chief is the Old Man behind his back.  Everything being serene, and the engine-room clock marking twelve-thirty, one of the Seconds would shut off the air very gradually; the auxiliary would slow down, wheeze, pant and die—­and within two seconds the Chief’s bell would ring and an angry voice over the telephone demand what the several kinds of perdition had happened to the air!  Another trick in the game to the Chief!

It had gone past joking now:  had moved up from the uncanny to the impossible, from the impossible to the enraging.  Surreptitious search of the Chief’s room had shown nothing but the one locked drawer.  They had taken advantage of the Chief’s being laid up in Antwerp with a boil on his neck to sound the cabin for hidden wires.  They had asked the ship’s doctor anxiously how long a man could do without sleep.  The doctor had quoted Napoleon.

* * * * *

“If at any time,” observed the Second pleasantly, “you would like that cigarette case the barber is selling, you know how to get it.”

“Thanks, old man,” said the Red Un loftily, with his eye on the wall.

The Second took a step forward and thought better of it.

“Better think about it!”

“I was thinking of something else,” said the Red Un, still staring at the wall.  The Second followed his eye.  The Red Un was gazing intently at the sign which said:  “Cable crossing!  Do not anchor here!”

As the Second slammed out, the Chief crawled from his manhole and struggled out of his greasy overalls.  Except for his face, he was quite tidy.  He ran an eye down the port tunnel, where the shaft revolved so swiftly that it seemed to be standing still, to where at the after end came the racing of the screw as it lifted, bearded with scud, out of the water.

“It looks like weather to-night,” he observed, with a twinkle, to the Fourth.  “There’ll aye be air wanted.”  But the Fourth was gazing at a steam gauge.

III

The Red Un’s story, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts—­his temptation, his fall and his redemption.  All lives are so divided:  a step back; a plunge; and then, in desperation and despair, a little climb up God’s ladder.