“Looks like I’d better go aboard our ship and get away from here before anything happens to disable a wing,” Jack hastened to remark, sensing possible trouble which would be in the nature of a serious calamity just then.
“Go to it then, matey,” Perk told him, light-heartedly enough, “I’m ready to do my stuff as a half-cooked engineer. Don’t worry a bit about my gettin’ there with both feet if the bally motor only holds together. Don’t like its looks any too much, but then Lady Luck seems to be givin’ us a heap o’ favors, so we’re goin’ to finish after the Garrison style–heavy on the home stretch.”
Before Perk reached the last word his chum had gained his seat in the cubbyhole of the amphibian, and almost immediately called out:
“Cut that rope and let me get away, partner–hurry up before I get another and harder bump!”
Ten seconds afterward the airship was entirely free from contact with the drifting sloop. Then came the roar of the motor showing that Jack had given her the gun. Instantly there was a forward movement of the amphibian, which increased rapidly until it was rushing along with great speed presently lifting its nose toward the heavens and leaving the rolling surface of the gulf, soared aloft in repeated circles.
Perk, after seeing that his pal was well on his way, turned his attention to his own job. He had no particular trouble in coaxing the engine to start, although it did considerable “grunting” as though its joints might be rusty and in need of lubricating oil, thus telling that the late skipper had allowed his engineer to neglect his duties in a climate where the salt in the air always rusted the inside of gun barrels, machinery of all descriptions, and in many ways played havoc with exposed metal parts.
However, after the engine got well warmed up it began to work more smoothly so that Perk lost some of his first anxiety.
“Goin’ to get along okay I guess,” he assured himself and then, keeping the prow of his vessel headed due south, he found time to try and discover where Jack and his soaring crate might be.
The engine was a gas motor and well supplied with an abundance of fuel, since the winds on their recent voyage around the Florida Keys must have been favorable as a whole and with the motive power idle there had been no drain on the gas.
Perk was feeling prime at that particular moment in his checkered career. It afforded him much pride to thus be in sole charge of a captured rum-runner with a cargo of contraband aboard. Then, too, all doubts concerning his ability to serve as an engineer were already dissipated for the sloop was making fair time and carried a bone in her teeth, as the white lines of foam running out on either side attested.