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"During the second decade of the twentieth century the engineers decided to try the plan of running half of a transatlantic liner's screws by electricity generated by the engines for driving the others while the ship was in port, this having been a success already on a smaller scale.
Your quarters will be all ready, shipshape and trim as a liner's cabin." "Where will they be?" inquired Walter. "Want to see 'em?" "I'd like to, yes." "I s'pose you would," nodded Jerry. "You can as well as not; only they ain't fixed up as they'll be later. Look kinder dismal." "Oh, I shan't mind." The big man smiled at the eagerness of the boy's tone.
The third officer stared for just a fraction of a second; ran, seized a life-belt as the liner's length went shooting past; and hurled it with pretty good aim, too almost before a man of his working party had time to raise the cry of 'Man overboard! Before the alarm reached the bridge, he had kicked off his shoes; and the last sound in his ears as he dived was the ping of the bell ringing down to the engine-room a thin note, infinitely distant, speaking out of an immense silence.
He flung a second ball lightning bolt across the diminished space. He sent it whirling round and round the liner in a tight spiral. He ended by having it touch the liner's bow. Liquid light ran over the entire hull. "Your ten seconds are up," he said worriedly. "If you don't get out " But then he relaxed. A boat-blister on the liner opened. The boat did not release itself.
The delay in the French liner's arrival had made the matter look more urgent, but he had now an excuse for putting off its consideration. His duty to his employer came first. There were detailed plans that must be worked out before Fuller came and things he would want to know, and Dick sat up late at night in order to have the answers ready.
It sounds awfully primitive, but if it will mitigate the mischief in only fifty per cent. of cases, is it not well worth trying? Most collisions occur at slow speeds, and it ought to be remembered that in case of a big liner's loss, involving many lives, she is generally sunk by a ship much smaller than herself. Eighteen years have passed since I last set foot in the London Sailors' Home.
If Kenwardine was ruined or imprisoned, a serious obstacle in Dick's way would be removed, but it was unthinkable that this should be allowed to count when Clare must suffer. Besides, she might come to hate him if she learned that he was responsible for her father's troubles. But he would make the liner's fate a test.
It tilted forward and downward with a heart-stilling "Ssssooo"; the ladder disappeared; a line of brass-rimmed port-holes flashed past; a jet of steam puffed in Harvey's helplessly uplifted hands; a spout of hot water roared along the rail of the We're Here, and the little schooner staggered and shook in a rush of screw-torn water, as a liner's stern vanished in the fog.
Then he avoided another boat, and stopping the engine, steered for the steamer's ladder. When dinner was over, Dick sat by himself in a quiet spot on the liner's quarter-deck. There was a tall, iron bulwark beside him, but close by this was replaced by netted rails, through which he caught the pale shimmer of the sea.
We know, for example, when this boat will arrive at any particular place and when she'll sail; while you can reckon on a French liner's being three or four days late and on the probability of a Spaniard's not turning up at all. But whether you have revolutions, wars, or tidal waves, the Britisher sails on schedule." "There's some risk in that just now," Stuyvesant observed.
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