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The stoke-hold doors were screwed home, an' the stoke-hold was tight enough, but for a minute the mess in the engine-room deceived me. Only for a minute, though, an' that was because I was not, in a manner o' speakin', as calm as ordinar'. I looked again to mak' sure. 'T was just black wi' bilge: dead watter that must ha' come in fortuitously, ye ken."
Pass down a rope's end from aloft there, and let me get on deck, and I'll give you a sovereign cash down, and a berth in my steamboat's stoke-hold if you want one. I'm not asking you to help me more. I guess I'm quite competent to find my way on board, and to wipe this house tolerably clean before it's quit of me." "Nothing of the kind, sar," said the man behind the slit. "You insult me, sar.
"Then I shall start the centrifugal pumps going to empty the engine-room, and we'll soon have her as sound as a dollar." Luckily the water had not, as Frank had surmised, reached the fires, and though low there was enough pressure of steam to run the pumps till the boys were able to work in the stoke-hold.
I'd boil 'em alive, sor, or roast 'em in the stoke-hold, begorrah, if I had me own way with 'em. I would, sor, so hilp me Moses, if all the howly saints, whose names be praised, an' the blessed ould Pope, too, prayed me to spare 'em. Och, the murtherin' bastes, the daymans, the divvles!" He was almost beside himself in his rage and passionate invective.
"I closed all the stop valves up here the moment I knew what had happened; and the men below in the stoke-hold have cut off the supply from the main pipe, while Mr Links has gone into the screw well to disconnect the propeller." "Very good, Grummet. So they be all right down below?" "All right, sir." "Thank God for that! How about the fires?"
They turned the searchlight upon her, opened fire upon her with every weapon that would hurl a shot, and presently, when she was within about a thousand yards of the entrance, they fired an observation mine as she passed over it, and down she went, taking her engine-room and stoke-hold crew with her.
"'The man Davis got boisterously drunk and when arrested admitted that the yacht was in no danger and that he had flooded her stoke-hold out of revenge," explained M. Desplaines. "In that case, why does not Mr. Barr come back to New York on her?" demanded Frank. The consular agent smiled. "He thinks he is on the track of more ivory and has already engaged part of an expedition," he replied.
Again his hand wandered towards his waist, but he bethought himself, and bent in pretense that the bandage on his leg needed readjusting. Despite the man's shrewd guess as to the cause of the accident in the stoke-hold, Elsie was at a loss to connect the freak of some Valparaiso loafer with the deep-laid scheme which contemplated the destruction of the Kansas.
Good heavens! said the captain from the bridge, 'I should think you did. He pulled the string of our fog-horn, which was a weak one. It sputtered and choked, because the stoke-hold was full of water and the fires were half drowned, and at last gave out a moan. It was answered from the fog by one of the most appalling steam sirens I have ever heard.
At the fifth shot, a gigantic crash resounded from below, and the stokers rushed above with the news that the fore stoke-hold had three feet of water in it. The hands received the news with a deep groan; then with curses and recriminations. They bellowed like bulls at Black; they refused all orders. He shot down man after man, while I crouched for safety in the tower; and they became but fiercer.
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