STO'B 6-8 Captain Fitton

Author's Note|First Post|Previous|Next| last episode with Dr M’Mullen GLOSSARY

Having extracted himself from the engineer, Philip looked over the men on duty in the engine and boiler rooms, as much as he could in the weak light of the oil lamps.  These men were hard at work, sweating in the warm, damp air, shoveling coal into the boiler and raking it into place, minding the feed and the steam gauges, and reaching into the engine with oil cans.  The furnace door opened for the stoker to rake the coals and in the burst of light Philip saw that the crew’s clothes were grimy with coal dust and oil.  “Very good, gentlemen,” he said, before escaping to the comparative 90-degree coolness of the berth deck.

The only things that remained were the bread room, tin-lined against the rats and poorly-stocked though in good order, and finally the magazine, reached by a trap-door hatch in the floor of the officers’ store room, but only after lighting the lamp in the light room (again more of a cupboard, and in this case entered via a hatch in the deck of Philip’s personal store room).  Philip removed his boots, belt, coat, and sword belt, laying them carefully aside before donning list slippers and an apron and tapping on the hatch.

Mister Horrace opened the hatch immediately, greeting Philip as if he had never met him, rather than as if they had spoken a mere half a glass earlier, and stood aside to allow Philip past.

Author's Note|First Post|Previous|Next| last episode with Dr M’Mullen GLOSSARY