Walker, in his brief catalogue of occupations, had suppressed one. To
make sure, Christobal closed a water-tight bulkhead door which cut off
the principal staterooms from the saloon. Then he and his two helpers
carried out a painful but necessary task. It was his duty to certify
whether or not life was extinct. There were very few exceptions. The
three men lifted the bodies and threw them overboard. When they reached
the corpses of the second officer and a Spanish engineer who had been
knifed in the defense of the jolly-boat--his comrade had scrambled into
one of the life-boats--Tollemache took possession of such money,
documents, and valuables as were in their pockets, intending to draw up
an inventory when an opportunity presented itself.
Though they knew not the moment when a sickening crash would herald the
final dissolution of the ship, they proceeded with their work
methodically. In half an hour they had reached the end. All the injured
men--seven nondescript sailors and firemen--were carried to the saloon
and placed under Christobal's care. Walker dived below to the
engine-room, where he had already disconnected the rods broken or bent by
the fracture of a guard ring, which, in its turn, was injured by the
blowing out of a junk-ring, a stout ring of forged steel secured to one
of the pistons. He could do nothing more on deck. Whether he was
destined to live fifty seconds or as many years he was ill content to
hear his beloved engines knocking themselves to pieces with each roll of
the ship.
Tollemache, who undertook the firing of the donkey-boiler, which was
situated on the main deck aft of the saloon--for the Kansas was built
chiefly to accommodate cargo--during his wanderings round the world had
picked up sufficient knowledge of steam-power to shovel fuel into the
furnace and regulate the water-level by the feed valve and pump. The
small engine, more reliable and quite as powerful as a hundred men, was
in perfect order. It abounded in valves and taps, but Walker's parting
instructions were explicit: "Keep yo' eye on the glass, an' pitch in a shovel of coal evewy ten
minutes: she'll do the west."
So the new hand, satisfied that the gage was correct and the furnace
lively, lit his pipe, sat down, and began to jot in a note-book the
contents of his coat-pockets. The Spaniard's letters he could not read,
though he gathered that one of them was from a wife in Vallodolid, who
would travel overland early in January to meet her husband. But the
Englishman's correspondence was terribly explicit. A "heart-broken
mother" wrote from Liverpool that "Jack" had been shot during one of the
many cold-weather campaigns on the Indian frontier. "I have no news,
simply a telegram from the War Office. But of what avail to know how my
darling died. My tears are blinding me. You and I alone are left, and
you are thousands of miles away. May the Lord be merciful to me, a
widow, and bring you home to comfort me." Yet the knife which killed him
must have gone very near that letter.