lOO CHALLENGER 



shouting continually and inspecting every compartment until the 

 engine room was reached, where the noise of sluicing water was 

 now very great every time the ship rolled to the swell. The small 

 party then worked along the narrow well deck passage, their 

 thoughts turning to the flooding water and the possibility of the 

 ship's foundering at any moment as they got further and further 

 from the clean air of the upper deck, which now seemed one of 

 the most desirable places imaginable. At the end of the passage 

 tappings were heard from the stokehold below. It was not pos- 

 sible to enter from the port side so that it was necessary to work 

 round to the starboard side before the stokehold could be reached. 

 In the darkness somewhere below the voice of the trapped man 

 could be heard, crazy with fear; he called desperately for help, 

 but could not be persuaded by the searchers to tell them how 

 they could get down to him through the darkness; all that he 

 could tell them was that flood water prevented his reaching the 

 deck by the usual ladder. 



The rescuers worked their way round the base of the funnel 

 and got onto the steel gratings above the boiler casing ; from there 

 with a torch the trapped man's head could be seen, above the 

 top of the end of the boiler casing but below the gratings on which 

 they were standing. These gratings were formed of narrowly 

 placed steel bars, imprisoning him like a rat in a cage as the water 

 rose below him. There were two rungs of the grating rather more 

 widely spaced than the others, and slowly, bit by bit, the hysterical 

 man was encouraged to crawl along between the top of the 

 boiler and the gratings to this opening. He was covered in water 

 and oil fuel and was being burnt on the boiler casing as he made 

 his way along. But once he had squeezed wildly through the gap 

 he recovered quickly as he poured thanks on his rescuers and 

 shivered in the stern of the whaler. 



O'Neill reported that Barbour and McKenna had no thoughts 

 for their own safety and had to be restrained from entering the 

 dark, flooded stokehold of the ship which, as far as they knew, 

 might sink suddenly at any moment. McKenna had served in 

 merchant ships and his knowledge of their layout was invaluable 

 as the rescue party groped their way through the darkness guided 

 only by the cries from the stokehold. 



By now the lifeboats had come alongside and as Eros appeared 



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