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When, a few days later, the Portlander entered the unreal Ganges, Thomas could hardly hold himself from wild and unrestrained acts of excitable folly. He envied the crew who had to unfasten the coverings of the hatches, to tighten bolts on the donkey engines about the decks, to thread ropes through pulley blocks, to string lines of electric lights down dark and smelly hatches.

He talked to every one on board; that is, to every one except Sing Ho, who remained the only person on the ship not stirred up over the prospect of landing in story-book Calcutta. He even tried to talk to the Chinaman, but the dull stare from the eyes, and the tightly drawn wrapping-paper skin of the face so dampened his spirits that he stopped in the middle of a jumbled sentence, shrugged his shoulders, turned on his heel, and hurried away to join a group in animated but idle discussion around a rusty hoisting engine from which a dozen spurts of wasted steam were puffing. Every person had advice to offer for making the steam stay in the pipes, but Thomas noticed that no one raised a monkey-wrench or tightened a joint.

“Bad as Sing Ho; all of them,” he thought as he passed to an opened hatch, from which sounds of loud argument rose to the deck.

But Thomas was soon to learn that Sing Ho was not so detached from the management of ship duties as he seemed to be; that the sleepy-eyed Oriental did not attend so blindly only to his own kitchen work as he appeared to be doing.

The group of advisers leaning over the leaking hoisting engine finally exhausted their suggestions for making the heap of junk iron steam-tight. The oiler from the engine room, sent to make it workable for the next day’s swinging and landing of cargo, had gazed at its rips and seams as long as he dared. He was torn between two feelings. This was his allotted post for discharging cargo. Yet, if the engine could not be made to work, could he be given any other job? All the other hoisting engines had their quota of men to operate them. Could he by hook or by crook get shore leave? It was worth thinking over. So he wriggled on his side, slid on his back, and peered about and in and under with his bleary eyes.

He tapped with a hammer here, and pulled with a bar there, and tightened or loosened with his wrench everywhere. Suddenly a nut at which he was tugging sprang loose with a grunt. A joint split apart and a fountain of hissing steam and boiling water gushed out and struck the palms of the hands that he instinctively held out to protect his face. An idler quickly turned off the main pipe valve, while the bungler, shaking his arms in pain, hurried down to the engineer’s room to have oil poured over his burns.

Late that night only the prowling Sing Ho saw an older man quickly put that donkey engine into condition.

It was Sing Ho, also, who next morning noticed that this engine was the only one with no man operating it. It was this same undemonstrative cook who observed the second engineer coming along the deck, bound to discover that one unit of his scheme for discharging cargo was not working. It was this same unchanging Oriental who padded along in his straw slippers until he found Thomas in enchanted contemplation of the distant river bank, touched him on the shoulder, and then, with never even a grunt, pointed forward towards the raving Scotchman who was demanding of all powers in heaven and earth why no one was “standing by” here.

The boy drew closer.

Thomas could just make out through the sneezes and burrs of the thick Scotch speech:

“Is this where that scamp of an oiler scalded his hands?”

“Yes,” ventured Thomas, to save the man from a stroke of apoplexy.

“And no one to work her!” the thin Scotchman added, looking in his dark clothes for all the world like a long slate pencil.

The two gazed sadly at the rusty machine as though it were an object of great rarity. The Scotchman tugged at his back pockets and finally dragged to light two enormous gloves.

“Could you run the thing?” He appealed to Thomas with a dirty cloth glove in each extended hand.

“Certainly,” Thomas answered; but he did not touch the gloves.

“Will ye?”

“What about union rules and all the other little matters?”

“Do you belong to any union yourself—the Seaman’s, for instance?”

“None,” Thomas assured him.

“Well, if we get close to the wharves, drop the levers and throw the gloves overboard—no, not overboard,” he corrected, gazing at them carefully. “Put them under the crossbars, so they won’t blow away, and just stroll off.” Then he added as a promise of reward, “The quicker we get all the cargo on deck for quick movement, the more chances for shore leave.”

Thomas slipped the gloves on, stepped to the little iron platform, and released the brake with his foot. He felt a delightful tingle run over him as the drum of the engine spun round, and the heavy block at the end of the tackle disappeared in the depths of the ship’s hold.

“Anybody below?” bellowed the Second Engineer.

“Aye, aye, sir,” came up from the dark depths.

“Make fast, then.”

Thomas watched the tackle swaying about.

“Haul away!” the Scotchman called to him, making at the same time a peculiar motion with his enormous paws.

Thomas concentrated on the two levers in his hands. He felt that the right hand must control the hoisting. He moved it. The steam hissed as the weight held it. The engine wheezed, the piston struggled, the large drum moved, then raced around, and a huge case darted past the deck and soared like a balloon towards the top of the mast.

“Where ye sending it?” yelled the Second Engineer. “To Heaven?”

Thomas dropped the lever and the case spun round and round in the air.

“Lower away.”

When it was five feet above the deck Thomas remembered the lever in his left hand. He moved it slightly. The case swung clear of the open hatchway, so that it could be deposited on the deck.

“Ye’ll do, if ye don’t fly too high,” approved his superior. “Now I’ll get a man to signal ye. Can ye stand the gaff?”

Tom’s only answer was a saucy ugly face with a smile in the middle of it.

After he had placed a layer of huge cases about the deck Thomas discovered that he need not be so careful, for he was raising nothing but huge rounded bales of soft material.

And when he had almost finished the remaining three hours of his watch he could have cried with delight, for the gods of the ocean, or the fates themselves, delivered the Eurasian boatswain into his power. The circumstances were more than any youth could resist.

Thomas had become strangely conscious that a pair of intent eyes were watching him. In an interval of using both hands and one foot on levers and brake, he turned his eyes behind him to the upper rail of the deck-house. This time he was not astonished to discover Sing Ho lazily scanning the shores of the river and the hazy blue sky above.

“Even he sniffs the land,” Thomas said aloud.

The Chinaman seemed to see everything that occurred, even when he was not apparently looking in the direction of the action. His eyes dropped straight at Tom’s, then swept to the far side of the deck on which the hoisting engine stood, his look accompanied by the merest shrug of his right shoulder.

“He doesn’t wink every time,” Thomas mentally noted. “Did he wink at me the other day, or was I only seeing things?”

He turned his own eyes across the tops of packing-cases and bales of freight in the direction in which Sing Ho was gazing, until he saw three heads bobbing about. Hanson and two of his watch had emerged from the forecastle and were busy with some part of the ship’s tackle. Soon the boatswain finished his directions to the men. His grating voice ceased, but Thomas caught sight of a flapping hand above the opening hatch and had to lower away.

For five minutes he worked steadily, carefully placing the squashy soft bales, until there seemed no safe space for any more. He swung what must be the last one clear of all those on deck and held it poised in the air until some resting-place could be found or cleared for it.

Then he had leisure to look again for Sing Ho and Hanson. No glance, no sign came from the squinting Chinese cook. His face might have been carved from yellow stone. Hanson had forgotten ship duties and was thinking only of the land. To see better, he had scrambled upon one of the packing-cases and now stood, a bow-legged, dark figure, clearly marked against the brightening sky.

“What a chance!” thought Thomas.

The lever in his left hand moved ever so slightly and with its motion the bale on the hook swayed from side to side in the air. If the ship had been rolling ever so little, that bale would have swung like a pendulum across the deck from one rail to the other.

Well, why not?

Thomas swept his eyes swiftly up to the front of the deck-house. Sing Ho was seeing nothing. Not a chin or nose or cap visor protruded from the officers’ bridge. The two sailors had disappeared behind the piles of cases. Not a soul was paying the slightest attention to Thomas.

He knew that his watch was almost finished. At any second the ship’s bell might ring and with it there would appear from the dark passageway behind him the man from the engine-room crew to take over his station for the next four hours.

Dare he risk it?

All these thoughts passed quickly through his mind. Before he had made any decision for himself, his left hand had acted automatically. The lever controlling the sideward movement of the arm of the hoisting crane began to move down, then up. Thomas could not force himself to look at the machinery.

His eyes were fixed for a second on the swaying mass in the air. Then he shifted them to the expansive seat of Hanson’s soiled trousers. The bale was swinging beautifully now, and, what was more to his delight, absolutely silently. The exercise that the blocks and tackle had been getting for three hours had finally made them work with perfect rhythm and smoothness.

There must be no tell-tale squeak!

The soft mass was covering fifteen feet in its flight now, yet it moved so slowly that it made no swish through the air, at least not enough to be heard above the swish of the ship through the water.

And still Hanson did not move!

And still no one saw what was happening!

A qualm pricked Tom’s conscience. That bale weighed several hundred pounds. If it fell on a man it might crush him. He caught his breath. Then he forced himself to examine the huge mass carefully. It was not solidly packed. It was so soft that its edges were curved and its corners mashed in. A blow from it could knock an elephant off his feet, yet be so carefully struck that his skin would not even be bruised.

Tom swept any thought of hesitation from him. If he could only land the bale on that bulging back pocket!

The huge mass was now swinging within three feet of the blissfully unconscious Hanson. It seemed unbelievable that he could not hear it. The substitute engine tender watched it poise behind the boatswain and then begin its graceful returning curve.

From the corner of his eye he saw Hanson move. Was he going to get down from his perch? It was an anxious moment. No; he merely hitched up his trousers, making that irritating expanse all the more luring a target.

Over to the left swayed the brown bale. It stopped. It hung motionless. Would it never start on its return flight?

Slowly it began its backward swing.

Thomas was tense with emotion. He could hardly stand still. He gazed at the catapult to make it move faster by mere force of his will. After an agonizing pause it began to move across the deck, gathering momentum as it moved.

Then Tom’s left hand moved the lever a few inches. There was a muffled spurt of steam. The swinging bale moved faster.

“That will carry it three feet farther!” he whispered through his gritted teeth as he waited.

Directly in the line of that extra three feet stood Hanson, rapturously dreaming of the pleasures of port.

There was no sound as the bale struck him squarely where Thomas had aimed it. Both parties to the blow were too soft to make a resounding thud, but the blow was a powerful one.

Hanson uttered a terrified roar as he was swept slowly from his stand on the packing-case. When the bale reached the limit of its swing, it retired from the flying Eurasian’s posterior and left him moving through the air like a successful flying man. To Tom’s fascinated gaze his evolutions looked like those of a slowly starting pin-wheel. Over and over he turned as he sank in a wide curve from Tom’s vision.

He could hear the astonished yells of the two seamen as they leaned over the rail. He heard a vigorous splash. Some one on the bridge shouted, “Man overboard!” Sing Ho winked once at the reckless young marine architect and then withdrew his head from the rail. Thomas wanted to dash to the side of the ship to see what had become of Hanson, but he was terrified by the risk of discovery.

Hastily fixing the clutches of the engine, he retreated to the depths of the dark passageway behind him and waited, leaning against the wall until his relief reached him.

“Here, put these gloves safely under a rod,” he told the young Filipino oiler. “They belong to——”

“Me know. Jerry. Why you in here? Too hot outside, eh?”

Thomas was willing to avoid any explanation. He nodded, and hurried along the corridor to the rear deck.

Some one near the stern had flung a rope to the swimming Hanson and had dragged him aboard. The sight of the infuriated man standing in a puddle of water was a relief to Thomas. Seamen of both watches were gathering in wonder and amusement around the dripping creature. His own men were too terrorized to ask any questions, but the other watch openly guffawed at him.

“Couldn’t wait till we anchored to take a swim,” laughed one.

“Swim?” retorted another. “Getting swell. Took a quick Henglish plunge bath.”

“Who pulled him out?” squeaked the tiniest able-bodied seaman on board.

“Ought to be thrown overboard hisself,” a disguised voice called from the interested group.

Just then the comically vacant face of Sven appeared above a bale.

“Vhat’s oop?” he asked stupidly.

“The bo’s’n very kindly went to look for your lost hat, you old Swede!” some one explained in a loud voice.

Sven looked to see what Hanson was going to do. As he started forward the innocent Scandinavian’s countenance broke into an understanding grin that lasted four hours.

Nobody on board could tell Hanson anything about his accident. And Thomas was never able to get a straight look from Sing Ho again.