CHAPTER XVII
THE PROFFERED CROWN
The Laminian's wireless-operator sat in his room, three hours later, with his door hooked back against the wall-plates and his window-curtains gently flapping. From its unpainted shelf droned and hummed his dry-battery electric fan. A seaman passed by under the awning, carrying in his hand a cluster of deck-lamps. From the open ventilator-heads came the discordant sound of steel shovels grating on steel, the occasional slam of a furnace door, the throb and pulse of the unvarying engines. Otherwise it was very quiet; sea and sky met in a world of unbroken peace which the passing of so incongruous a thing of steel and steam disturbed for only a moment, agitated foolishly, yet for only a heart-throb or two.
Then high above the quiet deck sounded out an even more incongruous noise, the nervous, tense staccato of the wireless "spark." It seemed like some underworld god of speed
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