It must be blood he could feel it trickling slowly, heavily down the side of his cheek.
And that deep, powerful vibration, a vibration overlain with an indefinable note of strain that set his engineer's teeth on edge, he could hear it, almost feel it, immediately in front of him.
His bare hand reached out, recoiled in instant reflex as it touched something smooth and revolving, and burning hot.
The shaft tunnel!
Of course.
That's where he was, the shaft tunnel.
They'd discovered fractured lubricating pipes on the port shafts too, and he'd decided to keep this engine turning.
He knew they'd been attacked.
Down here in the hidden bowels of the ship, sound did not penetrate: he had heard nothing of the aircraft engines: he hadn't even heard their own guns firing, but there had been no mistaking the jarring shock of the 5.25s surging back on their hydraulic recoils.
And then, a torpedo perhaps, or a near miss by a bomb.
Thank God he'd been sitting facing inboard when the Ulysses had lurched.
The other way round and it would have been curtains for sure when he'd been flung across the shaft coupling and wrapped round...
The shaft!
Dear God, the shaft!
It was running almost red hot on dry bearings!
Frantically, he pawed around, picked up his emergency lamp and twisted its base.
There was no light.
He twisted it again with all his strength, reached up, felt the jagged edges of broken screen and bulb, and flung the useless lamp to the deck.
He dragged out his pocket torch: that, too, was smashed.
Desperate now, he searched blindly around for his oil can: it was lying on its side, the patent spring top beside it.
The can was empty.
No oil, none.
Heaven only knew how near that over-stressed metal was to the critical limit.
He didn't.
He admitted that: even to the best engineers, metal fatigue was an incalculable unknown.
But, like all men who had spent a lifetime with machines, he had developed a sixth sense for these things, and, right now, that sixth sense was jabbing at him, mercilessly, insistently.
Oil, he would have to get oil.
But he knew he was in bad shape, dizzy, weak from shock and loss of blood, and the tunnel was long and slippery and dangerous, and unlighted.
One slip, one stumble against or over that merciless shaft... Gingerly, the Engineer-Commander stretched out his hand again, rested his hand for an instant on the shaft, drew back sharply in sudden pain.
He lifted his hand to his cheek, knew that it was not friction that had flayed and burnt the skin off the tips of his fingers.
There was no choice.
Resolutely, he gathered his legs under him, swayed dizzily to his feet, his back bent against the arching convexity of the tunnel.
It was then that he noticed it for the first tune, a light, a swinging tiny pinpoint of light, imponderably distant in the converging sides of that dark tunnel, although he knew it could be only yards away.
He blinked, closed his eyes and looked again.
The light was still there, advancing steadily, and he could hear the shuffling of feet now.
All at once he felt weak, light-headed: gratefully he sank down again, his feet safely braced once more against the bearing block.
The man with the light stopped a couple of feet away, hooked the lamp on to an inspection bracket, lowered himself carefully and sat beside Dodson.
The rays of the lamp fell full on the dark heavy face, the jagged brows and prognathous jaw: Dodson stiffened in sudden surprise.
"Riley!
Stoker Riley!" His eyes narrowed in suspicion and conjecture. "What the devil are you doing here?"
"I've brought a two gallon drum of lubricating oil," Riley growled.
He thrust a Thermos flask into the Engineer-Commander's hands. "And here's some coffee.
I'll 'tend to this, you drink that... Suffering Christ!
This bloody bearing's red hot!"
Dodson set down the Thermos with a thump.
"Are you deaf?" he asked harshly. "Why are you here?
Who sent you?
Your station's in 'B' boiler room!"
"Grierson sent me," Riley said roughly.
His dark face was impassive. "Said he couldn't spare his engine room men, too bloody valuable... Too much?"