The second engineer, whose name was Calder, was trying to console his chief by saying it might have been worse.
"It canna be waur, man," said old Mac. "What can be waur than bein' wreckit, and on a wee sma' bit o' ice that's veesibly meltin' as I sit on it? The cauld is strikin' through to my very banes, and in the hurry I've had the sair misfortune to come away wi'out the medicine for my rheumatics. To-morrow I'll be i' a knot wi' 'em, and nothing for it but cauld water, which I couldna abide sin' I was a bairn. And all my work on the engines wasted. I'm a mournful man this hour."
He drank something out of a bottle. As he had left his medicine behind it could not have been that. It certainly did him no good, for he wept all the more after taking it, and throwing himself in Calder's arms he insisted that the second engineer was his mother, and begged her not to insist on his having a cold bath.
"He's a puir silly buddy," said Calder, "and I've no great opeenion of him as an engineer, though he's no' the fool he seems the noo."
And the night wore away while Mac wept and Spink slept the sleep of the righteous, and
