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The water, gaining fast, showed him that their combined efforts were hopeless. He ran to the boiler-room for more aid. Here the water had risen almost to the fires; as the ship rolled, it slushed up between the floor-plates and ran in oily streams about the men's feet. Again panic seized the crew. "Come on, lads!" Sullivan shouted above the infernal din. "We'll be drowned in this hell-hole!"
An examination of the boiler-room, which he reached by moving a ton of fallen stone-work from the doorway into the dynamo-room, encouraged him still further. As he penetrated into this place, feeble-shining lamp held on high, eyes eager to behold the prospect, he knew that success was not far away.
I had only called the second time, and was going away, when he showed me a steamship he had constructed with his own hands a fair-sized model, complete in every detail, even to the imitation stokers in the boiler-room, and which would run by the hour if supplied with oil and water. I soon learned that his skill in mechanical construction was great.
He was helping to support the household! To know you are useful, and realize that you are needed, is a great stimulus to growth. Never again did the Carnegies hear that muffled groan, "There is no work!" The synonym of the word "Carnegie" is work. In a year little Andy had graduated to the boiler-room at two dollars a week.
One dark night she was struck amidships by a 2,000-ton British sloop-of-war. In crowded quarters and steaming without lights those little collisions are bound to occur. This one was hit amidships bam! and amidships is a bad place for a destroyer to be hit her big engine and boiler-room compartment lie amidships. This one of ours was hit so hard that nobody aboard ever thought she would stay up.
The fuel rested at a steeper angle than his weak eyes could see, and his bar dislodged a wedged lump; an instant later the new passer was half buried under a heap of sliding coal. Bewildered, but unhurt, he crawled to the boiler-room, shaking the coal from his back and shoulders. Through dust-filled ears he heard the general laugh at his plight. "Look at the nigger Irishman!" a stoker called.
The tug came close beside us, and a man on deck threw us a rope. Willing hands dragged us to the deck, Nobs scrambling nimbly aboard without assistance. The rough men were gentle as mothers with the girl. Plying us both with questions they hustled her to the captain's cabin and me to the boiler-room.
Another moment, and the stars and stripes supplant the pillow-case waving from the masthead of the "Young Republic." An officer who went into the boiler-room found that the captured crew had planned to blow up the vessel by tying down the safety-valve, so that an enormous pressure of steam strained the boilers almost to bursting. A quick blow of a hatchet, and that danger was done away with.
"'Then the bronzed and lanky man arose with a smile of rare contentment, threw overboard his cigarette, and approaching the boiler-room hatch, called loudly: "Come out of that," and the President of the Federation of Fresh Water Firemen dragged himself wearily out into the flickering lights.
Evidently Tad Lewis had come prepared for desperate measures. A small door gave entrance to the boiler-room, and into the lock of this Mrs. Austin fitted a key; the next moment she and Paloma were safely inside. They found themselves in utter darkness now, with a smooth brick floor beneath their feet and a strong odor of oil and burnt fuel in their nostrils.
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