Thrice Armed Part 38

CHAPTER XXVIII

DISABLED ENGINES

Spring had come, and all down the wild West Coast the tall pines had shaken off their load of snow and the rivers were thundering in their misty canons, but there was very little sign of it at sea when one bitter morning a cl.u.s.ter of deeply bronzed men hung about the _Adelaide_'s engine-room skylights. They were lean and somewhat grim of face, as well as ragged and suggestively spare of frame, for they had borne all that man may bear and live through during the winter they had spent in the ice-bound wilderness. Now they were going back to civilization with many ounces of gold, and papers relating to auriferous claims, to invoke the aid of capital before they once more turned their faces toward the frozen north.

It was noticeable that although they were of widely different birth and upbringing there was the same stamp which revealed itself in a certain quietness of manner and steadiness of gaze upon them all, for these were the pick of the mining community, men who had grappled with the wilderness in its most savage moods long before they blazed a new trail south from the wilds of the Yukon. They had proved their manhood by coming back at all, for that winter the unfit had died. Still, though they had endured things beyond the comprehension of the average city man, they were glad of the shelter of the tall skylights, because the _Adelaide_'s flush deck was swept by a stinging wind and little showers of bitter spray blew all over it. She was rolling viciously across a waste of gray-blue sea which was flecked by livid froth, and her mastheads swung in a wide sweep athwart a sky of curious dingy blue.

There was no warmth anywhere in the picture, and apparently very little light; but for all that, every sea stood out from its fellows, and those back in the clear distance were etched upon the indented horizon with harsh distinctness. One of the men shook his head as he gazed at them.

"They look like the pines on the ridge did the day the blizzard struck us down on the a.s.siniboia Creek," he said. "It was a full-powered one.

The boys who'd camped ahead of us were frozen stiff by morning. The two we sc.r.a.ped the snow off were sitting there like statues, and we didn't worry 'bout the others. There was ten feet over them, anyway. I've no use for this kind of weather."

One of his companions swept his glance astern toward the smear of smoke on the serrated skyline, which was blotted out next moment when the _Adelaide_ swung her stern aloft.

"If you're right in your figuring, I'm glad I came along in this boat,"

he said. "Anyway, she's bigger, though I 'most took my berth in the _Shasta_. Seems to me we're quite a long while getting away from her."

The others agreed with him, for they had seen that smear of smoke on the skyline since early morning. Then they turned to watch the engineer, who came out of a door close by, and glanced up to weather, blinking in the bitter wind. He was a big loosely-built man in dungarees, with the pallid face of one accustomed to the half-light and heat of the engine-room, but in his case it was also unhealthily puffy. Then he slouched right aft, and stood still again looking down at the dial of the taffrail log which records the distance run, while he fumbled in a curious aimless fashion with the blackened rag in his hand.

"That," said one of the miners, "is a man I'm no way stuck on. Now, you'll most times find hard grit in an engineer, but this one kind of strikes me as feeling that there was something after him he was scared of."

"Well," said one of the others reflectively, "it's not an uncommon thing. There was a man down on the flat where we struck it who had a kind of notion that there were three big timber wolves on his trail.

Kept his rifle clean with the magazine ram full for them, but one night they got him. A sure thing. Tom was there."

The man at whom he glanced nodded. "Now and then I wish I hadn't been,"

he said. "Lister was sitting very sick beside his fire that night. Said he heard those wolves pattering in the bush--there were thick pines all round us--'most made me think I did."

"Well?" said one of his companions.

The miner made a little expressive grimace. "Longest night I ever put in. Sat there and kept them off him. Anyway, I tried, but he was dead at sun-up."

None of the others showed any astonishment, and the man who had asked the question glanced back toward the engineer.

"Guess the man who runs this steamboat should be getting rich by the way they strike you for a drink," he said. "I'm bringing down 'most two hundred ounces, but I wouldn't like to fill that engineer up at the tariff."

"Never saw him making a traverse, anyway. He walks quite straight," said a comrade.

"Well," said the other, "I've seen his eyes."

Just then the man they were discussing turned toward the bridge, from which the skipper was beckoning him. A minute or two later they went into the room beneath it, and the engineer sat down looking at the man in front of him with narrow, half-open eyes. The latter was young and spruce in trim uniform, a man of no great education, who had a favorable opinion of himself.

"Can't you shove her along a little faster, Robertson?" he said. "We'll be thirty knots behind our usual run at noon."

"No," said the engineer, in a curious listless drawl. "I've been letting the revolutions down. That high-pressure piston's getting on my nerves again."

"Shouldn't have thought you had any worth speaking of," said the skipper, with a quick sign of impatience. "You give one the impression that they've gone to pieces long ago. Take a drink, and tone them up."

He flung a bottle on the table, and watched his companion's long greasy fingers fumble at it with a look of disgust. Robertson half-filled his gla.s.s with the yellow spirit, and drained it with slow enjoyment. Then he breathed hard, and, leaning his elbows on the table, looked at the skipper heavily.

"Well," he said, "you want something?"

"I do," said the skipper, and taking down a chart unrolled one part of it. "I want to shake her up until we get away from the _Shasta_, for one thing. Wheelock has been hanging on to us as far as his boat's speed will allow it the last two or three runs. I can't quite figure what he's after."

Robertson looked almost startled for a moment as though an unpleasant thought had occurred to him, but his heavy, puffy face sank into its usual lethargicness again.

"Wants to scoop your pa.s.sengers. Done it once or twice," he said.

"Well?"

"For another thing, I want to get round this nest of islands before the breeze that's brewing comes down on us. It will be a snorter. If I were surer of your--old engines, I'd try the inside pa.s.sage, though the tides run strong. Now, if I head her up well clear of the islands I'm throwing miles away, and letting the _Shasta_ in ahead of me. Wheelock has apparently an engineer who will stand by him."

Again a curious furtive look that suggested uneasiness crept into Robertson's eyes.

"He's always just ahead or just astern, and we've altered our sailing bill twice," he said, as if communing with himself.

"I guess you dropped on the reason. Anyway, if you can give me a little more steam, we'll be clear of this unhallowed conglomeration of reefs and tides by this time to-morrow. If it's necessary, you can run her easier afterward."

Robertson laid a grimy finger on the chart. "She'll be feeling the indraught now--it's running ebb," he said. "If I can read the weather, you'll soon have the breeze strong on your starboard bow."

The skipper flung a swift glance at him, in which there was a trace of astonishment. "How'd you come to know just where she is?"

"Taffrail log," said Robertson. "I generally run a rough reckoning in my head. Well, you want another knot or two out of her until you have the big bight to lee of you? See what I can do, though I'd sooner take a knot off her. That high-press piston's worrying me."

He jerked himself heavily to his feet, and when he shambled out of the room the skipper, who made a little gesture of relief, took up his dividers and laid their points on the chart. One of them rested in the middle of the mark left by the engineer's greasy finger. After that he rolled the chart up and stowed it away from the others in a drawer beneath his berth, and the look of annoyance in his face had its significance. He did not like his engineer, and although he had no particular reason for distrusting him he remembered that when the latter had found it necessary to stop his engines at sea, as he had done once or twice during the last trip or two, it had generally been in the last spot a nervous skipper would have desired. Then he went out, and climbed to his bridge.

"You can head her out two points more to westward," he said to the mate.

"Very good!" said the latter. "Still, we decided that the course she was on would keep her off the land."

"We did," said the skipper dryly. "Anyway, you'll head her out. We're going to have a wicked breeze from the west before this time to-night."

In the meanwhile the second engineer was leaning out from a slippery platform that swung and slanted as the _Adelaide_ lurched over the long gray seas, listening to the dull pounding of the high-pressure engine.

His face was as near as he could get it to the big cylinder, and after glancing at a little gla.s.s tube he looked down at a man with a tallow swab who clung to the iron ladder beneath him.

"I don't like the way she's slamming, Jake," he said. "There's mighty little oil going into her, either. Who's been throttling up the feed?"

"The chief," said the man on the ladder. "He was slinging it red-hot at Charley 'bout heaving oil away. Guess I'd have fed it to her by the gallon after seeing that new piston-ring sprung on."

The second pursed up his face, for there is an etiquette in these affairs at sea which the man, who had come there fresh from a sawmill, apparently did not understand. "Well," he said, "I guess Mr. Robertson bossed the putting in of that ring, and he knows his business. Anyway, if he tells you you will run her dry."

Then a big, loosely-hung figure came shambling down the ladder, and the second withdrew. However, he stood among the columns below, and watched his superior stop and glance at the tube through which the oil flowed before he went about his work again. Robertson was apparently satisfied, and after slouching round the engine-room and uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a little further the throttle valve which turns steam on to the engines, he crawled back to his greasy room. He sloughed off his jacket and boots, and drawing a bottle from beneath the mattress of his bunk poured himself a stiff drink of whisky before he stretched himself out.

He slept soundly, and did not hear the roar of the engines below him when the _Adelaide_ flung her stern out and the lifted screw whirred madly in the air. The thud of green water on her deck pa.s.sed unheeded too, though the second heard it as he watched the maze of clanking, banging steel, until the young third relieved him. The latter came down dripping, and shook a little shower of brine off him when he stopped beside his superior.

"It's blowing quite fresh, and she seems to be plugging it mighty hard since you shook her up," he said. "The chief must have given up worrying about that piston, or he wouldn't have had you take the extra knot or two out of her."

"Keep your eye on the--thing," said the second. "It's going to make us trouble yet. If I were boss of this job, I'd slow her down right now instead of pressing her."

He went up and also went to sleep, and, since the telegraph stood at full-speed ahead, the young third clung to a greasy rail, all eyes and ears, with one hand on the gear that would throttle down the steam, while the rolling grew more vicious and the plunges steeper. Quick as he was, there was a thunderous clamor every now and then as the big compound engines, which were twice the size of those of a modern boat of equal tonnage, ran away, and he commenced to long for the close of his watch while the perspiration dripped from him. He had not been very long at sea, and there is a responsibility upon the man on watch when the whirring screw swings clear. At last there was a heavier plunge than usual, and, though the third did all he could, the big engines span and clamored furiously as the stern went up. Then there was a harsh, grinding scream, and a crash. After that came sudden stillness, and the third frantically span the wheel that cut off the steam, while grimy men went sliding and floundering over the slippery plates and platforms toward the high-pressure engine.