The Return of the Straggler Before I turned in that evening I had done some good hours' work in the engine-room.

The boat was oil-fired, and in very fair order, so my duties did not look as if they would be heavy.

There was nobody who could be properly called an engineer; only, besides the furnace-men, a couple of lads from Hamburg who had been a year ago apprentices in a ship-building yard.

They were civil fellows, both of them consumptive, who did what I told them and said little.

By bedtime, if you had seen me in my blue jumper, a pair of carpet slippers, and a flat cap--all the property of the deceased Walter--you would have sworn I had been bred to the firing of river-boats, whereas I had acquired most of my knowledge on one run down the Zambesi, when the proper engineer got drunk and fell overboard among the crocodiles.
The captain--they called him Schenk--was out of his bearings in the job.