“You hoisted her on board?” he half shouted above the screeching wind to Medway.
“Yep,” was the brief reply. “Thought we might use her someway, so we made a tackle fast under her and hauled her aboard by the main cargo derrick.”
“That was mighty decent of you,” cried Jack warmly.
“Don’t fuss yourself,” was the rough rejoinder, “it warn’t done to please you.”
As Medway spoke, he turned into a doorway in the after part of the cabin house. From the hot smell of grease and oily machinery that arose from it, the boys knew that it led to the engine-room. They climbed down a steel-runged ladder and soon found themselves amidst a maze of polished rods, cams and levers. But the triple expansion engine was idle.
Hardly had they had time to notice this, when they saw that on a leather-covered bench set against the steel wall a man was reclining. His face was white and covered with sweat. His hand was bandaged and one of his legs was doubled up. From his expression of mute agony it was plain that he had been painfully injured.
“Judkins, the engineer,” explained Medway, with a sidewise jerk of his head. “Condenser went out of business a while ago. He got busted tryin’ to fix it. Think you boys can run this engine?”
“I can give ‘em a hand,” said Judkins in a weak voice.
“That’s enough then,” said Medway briskly, as if it was all settled. “Understand,” he said, turning to the boys, “it’s a case of life or death. The sea is increasing. If we don’t get going pretty soon, it’s down to Davy Jones for all of us.”
“But we don’t know anything about steam engines; very little, that is,” protested Jack, although both boys had, in addition to their other studies gone in for a course of steam engineering at the “Tech.” But that course, a sketchy one at best, had only comprised stationary engines.
“Well, Judkins can tell you what you want to know. The first thing to do, I guess, is to get that condenser going.”
“I had her going when I slipped and fell under the crank shaft,” said Judkins weakly. “All she needs is a union on that copper piping and she’ll be all right.”
He indicated the condenser and the place where the union would have to be attached.
“There’s a tool kit and fittings yonder,” he said, pointing to a bench affixed to the bulkhead that divided the engine-room from the stoke hold. A glance at the gauges affixed to this showed Jack that, at any rate, they had a good head of steam. The high-pressure boilers of the _Valkyrie_ were carrying one hundred and seventy-five pounds.