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Barney watched the road rushing rapidly out of sight beneath the gray fenders. He glanced occasionally at the speedometer. Seventy-five miles an hour. Seventy-seven! "Going some," murmured Barney as he saw the needle vibrate up to eighty. Gradually he nursed her up and up to greater speed. Eighty-five! The trees were racing by him in an indistinct blur of green.
The road began to twist slightly, with short raises and shorter level stretches winding among the aspens and spruces, with sudden, jagged turns about heavy, frowning boulders whose jutting noses seemed to scrape the fenders of the car, only to miss them by the barest part of an inch.
Not a word was to be spoken in case of their being hailed, nor was there to be the slightest movement on board unless the use of the fenders or poles were required. Lastly, all took off their boots. It was half an hour after the turn of the tide when the warps were thrown off.
The mantel is of carved oak, and the fenders so highly polished they seem almost to send out warmth, but the thermometer is working down toward zero, and the people are shivering. The spark of living fire is essential. Then how all changes! There must be fire from above to kindle our knowledge and ourselves before any of the needed results will come.
No, thank God! The firemen had been warned to keep away from the up-take, so the fragments of shell fell harmlessly on the iron floor-plates. We had rushed on the doomed ship, relentless as fate, crashing through her barricade of heavy spars and torpedo fenders, striking her below her starboard fore-chains, and crushing far into her.
Her boat danced on the waves like a cork, pitching heavily from side to side, with now the stern and now the bow pointing to the sky; at one moment leaping with its gunwale above the level of the smack's bulwarks; at the next moment eight or ten feet down in the trough of the waves; never at rest for an instant, always tugging madly at its tether, and often surging against the vessel's side, from actual contact with which it was protected by strong rope fenders.
I dared not look up nor move my head in any way, to see what was going on, but by listening I presently became aware that the last of the slaves had passed over the side, and that the pirates were now transferring the casks of water and the sacks of meal from our ship to their own, which the water being perfectly smooth they had lashed alongside the schooner, with a few fenders between the two hulls to prevent damage by the grinding of them together as they rose and fell upon the long scarcely perceptible undulations of the swell.
Gibney sniffed again the subtle tang of the South Seas drifting over from the Tropic Bird, and when a Kanaka, scantily clad, came on deck, threw a couple of fenders overside and retired to the forecastle singing one of those Hawaiian ballads that are so mournfully sweet and funereal, Mr. Gibney sighed again. "Gawd!" he murmured. "I've sure made a hash o' my young life." "What's bitin' you, Gib?"
A steep ledge of ground offered a natural pier, with tree-stumps for bollards. He let her come gently beyond the spot; reversed the propellers just at the right time, and backed neatly alongside. He moved the telegraph handle to FINISHED WITH ENGINES; ran out the gangplank smartly, and stepped ashore. He moored the vessel fore and aft, and hung out fenders to prevent chafing.
At the start the whole Salvation Army transportation system consisted of this one first huge limousine, heartlessly overdriven and overworked. For many weeks it was Colonel Barker's office and bedroom. It carried all of the Salvation Army workers to and from their stations, hauled all of the supplies on its roof, inside, on its fenders, and later also on a trailer.
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