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The whole ship's company besides the owner, consisted of an engineer and a boy. Forward of the engine were a cook-room, a little cabin, and the pilot-house, the latter so small that only one person could occupy it at the same time. "Who is the cook?" I asked, wondering how he managed to run the boat with only two hands.
The crew of the "Merrimac" were prepared for the attack; and four gunboats accompanying her were crowded with men, divided into squads, each with its specified duty. Some were to try and wedge the turret, some were to cover the pilot-house and all the openings with tarpaulin, others were to try to throw shells and gunpowder down the smokestack.
Neither did they make any remark or evince any surprise, beyond a shrug of the shoulders and an amused elevation of the eyebrows, when the savant, glancing at his watch, hastily rose from the table, and, in his absent-mindedness carrying with him a fork with a morsel of venison-steak impaled upon its prongs, hurried away to the pilot-house.
There they had difficulty in getting close enough to see; but Bradford, preceding the two women, succeeded by patience and diplomacy in forcing a way. The SPRITE was lying close under the pier, the top of her pilot-house just about level with the feet of the people watching her. She rose and fell with the restless waters. Fat rope-yarn bumpers interposed between her sides and the piling.
You would have said he was trying to infuse some of his own overflowing strength into the mechanism that, whirling, zooning with power, needed no more. The gleam in his eyes, there in the dark pilot-house, seemed almost that of a fanatic. His jaw hardened, his nostrils expanded. This strange man's face was now wholly other than it had been only a week before, drawn and lined by ennui.
It was but necessary to mention the latter course for it to be promptly decided upon; and Sir Reginald at once went to the pilot-house and did what was requisite, with the result that, a minute or two later, the Flying Fish was a thousand feet in the air, and drifting very gently to the southward before a languid northerly breathing of warm wind.
They were seated in the pilot-house, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and David, the patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba, and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished reading aloud his account of the engagement.
The reader is now in condition to inquire into what Captain Scott regarded as the one great mistake that had been made in the arrangements for outwitting the Moorish steam-yacht. The young captain was in the pilot-house of the Maud when the steamer was discovered.
"Better take this automatic," Murphy suggested, and showed him how to use it. But Mr. Reardon resolutely refused to abandon his monkey wrench, although he consented to carry the automatic to Riggins in the pilot-house.
Meanwhile the Mars, having reached a considerable height, being up so far, in fact, that the village of Shopton could scarcely be distinguished, Tom set the signal that told the engine-room force to start the propellers. This would send them ahead. Some of Tom's most trusted workmen formed the operating crew, the young inventor taking charge of the pilot-house himself.
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