Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-03-21
ENGINE ROOM AGAIN
By William McFee
Chief Engineer III. Nj. S. Kharki

respondents haze q 1ody of acritin9 to as
from pumprooms. The other day 1t aUas
Mr.. Kipling, aortting from the Grand Pump
Room Hotel at Bath. No1o comes William
McFee, our most cherished correspondent
oa naval matters, acho filings as a cheery
dispatch from pumproom OF a very dif-
terent sort. You all kno1o McFee, or ought
to, as the author of some very remarkable
books. and an engineer lieutenant of the
British ndpv during the 1Udr.
H. NJ. s. Kharki,
Malta, Feb. 22, 1919.
NIELL, here am I once more in a boiler
w suit. This is a fuel-oil ship, technically
belonging to the royal fleet auxiliary. and
flies the blue ensign. She chases around
after the destroyers, submarines and SO
forth and suckles them with Oil Whereby
I have a most beautiful pumproom copper
and gold, with cream-enamel bulkheads,
bronze loorplates and handrails of silver
like rays Of moonlight! And in the main
engine room she shines. The Second, an
enlbttered idealist, cannot conceal from
me the months Of toll which have produced
this satisfactory conclusion. She shines.
Her dynamo engines sing like enchanted
humming-tops and her pumps are to me
what a woman's hair Is to her-a crown
Of glory. And now a horde Of complacent
machinists have come aboard from the
yard, men who are past masters in the
dextrous surgery of ships, and have dis
emboweled her. They have ripped out her
entrails and placed suspensory bandages
about her. They have cut her heart out
and taken 1t ashore to examine Il refer
thus POLITICALLY to her High Pressure Cylin-
der). She lies now, stark and stripped, in
a byway of French Creek, apparently in
the throes Of an undignifed dissolution,
but really advancing toward her reincar-
nation When the Dockyard Reft is over,
when her red.lead wounds are healed and
covered with seenly gray paint, when her
one gruff little funnel Il borrow the adjec-
tive from that fine young artist Thomas
Burke) rears up its re-riveted throat once
more to the skies (and coughs wet steam
over an indignant and immaculate de-
stroyer), when all the sad d:sarray Of the
engine and boiler rooms has sifted once
again into the slick sobriety Of efficient
routine, you will not know her! And as
Du Maurier's esthetic damsel said in
Punch, as she gazed in trance at the
single MY III grass OF water, '7On EDWIN,
| may we live up to it," So hope to live
UP to the frantic standard attempted by
| the present reconstruction.
IITELL. had three months rain in Lon.
w don and hope I did some good work
at the desk, though a strong solution OF
SCOT and Labor Unrest is poor stimulant
| for a genius who seems doomed to short
circuit on the slightest provocation. How
| ever that may be, when the genial genie
| who presides over our destinies in White
hall asked me II I would go to the Medi-
terranean again, replied that would go
to Hellingfield to get warm, or words to
that effect. He laughed and said "well,
| go 20 Constantinople instead" I started
! and got as far as this enchanted isle,
| where found my ship.
T HAD an unhappy night journey from
Havre to Paris In an unheated wagon
(good word. that!l of the Chemins de
Fer de rEtat. which cured me OF any
1 enthusiasm for state-owned railroads. /
L orren ~rssnol dn tfo no7r n1,oo11r = r,se.