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Updated: May 24, 2025
"We had orders to call at Midway after castaways, and had our distance pretty nigh run down the day before. We steamed half-speed all night, looking to make it about noon, for old Tootles beg your pardon, sir, the captain was precious scared of the place at night. Well, there's nasty filthy currents round that Midway; you know, as has been there; and one on 'em must have set us down.
My hand went out and I rang down for half-speed, then for dead slow. We stood there and listened while the engines changed their beat from one to the other. In the saloon they had started a comic song with a chorus. Said she, after a bit, 'You can bring up now and wait for morning. North of the Gunnel here there's an eddy slack where the tides meet, and you may count on thirty fathoms.
Another Wolseley Vee type that was standardised was a 90 horse-power eight-cylinder engine running at 1,800 revolutions per minute, with a reducing gear introduced by fitting the air screw on the half-speed shaft.
Sour exhalations rose from the wake of the churning screw and there was a curious dragging feel in the boat's motion, as if she were pulling a body of water after her, but this was less marked when Jake found three or four feet, and by and by he threw down the pole and they went half-speed ahead.
The Su-chen was now, he considered, quite close enough to both fort and junks; he therefore rang for half-speed, at which the vessel just held her own against the current, the junks themselves having anchored in order to avoid being swept down under the Su-chen's guns. So the battle went grimly forward.
Second, that if the Titan was the aggressor she would certainly destroy the other craft, even at half-speed, and perhaps damage her own bows; while at full speed, she would cut her in two with no more damage to herself than a paintbrush could remedy. In either case, as the lesser of two evils, it was best that the smaller hull should suffer.
The accession of speed from working the paddles was at first but slight; not from any want of power, however, but simply from the fact that both engines were ordered to work slowly, and though propelling the great ship at something like eleven knots, were really scarcely driving at indicated half-speed.
The answer promptly came back that the sooner he sailed the better; and Jim, ordering the saluting guns to be manned and loaded, made his way with a proud step to the navigating bridge, and rang his engines to half-speed ahead, the anchor having already been got up.
Not a sound reached me, except the mournful muffled hooting of a steamer's syren at intervals; no doubt some wretched collier, nosing her way at half-speed through the fog, in momentary terror of collision.
At half-speed it circled round and round the space, turning its vast head from side to side with an anxious and perturbed gaze, as if seeking only some avenue of escape; once or twice it endeavored to leap up the parapet that divided it from the audience, and on falling, uttered rather a baffled howl than its deep-toned and kingly roar.
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