The rudder-gear and the gas
lift-shunt, seated side by side under the engine-room dials, are
the only machines in visible motion. The former sighs from time
to time as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch. The
latter, cased and guarded like the U-tube aft, exhibits another
Fleury Ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function
is to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without
watching. That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to
itself beside a sputtering green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet
aft down the flat-topped tunnel of the tanks a violet light,
restless and irresolute. Between the two, three white-painted
turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on their side, accentuate
the empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle of the liquefied
gas flowing from the vacuum into the bilge-tanks and the soft
gluck-glock of gaslocks closing as Captain Purnall brings "162"
down by the head. The hum of the turbines and the boom of the air
on our skin is no more than a cotton-wool wrapping to the
universal stillness.
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