"We never hammer," replied the Chief with dignity. "We just spin a wee bit faster when more boilers are fired and the steam pressure is raised. I could push her up to seventeen without a weep from the joints of the Babcock boilers. But it would be wicked war-r-k with fuel oil at 150 shillings the ton. At an easy eleven knots we are just burning money; at a forced seventeen it would be a ghastly conflagration."
"I don't understand machinery," said Madame, "though I can run a five-ton motor lorry with any man born. What is all this talk of oil? I thought that steam yachts burned coal and yet I haven't seen a sign of coal dust in the vessel. My sitting-room and my cabin, like this saloon here, are warmed by electric radiators, and when I was down below, one might have eaten off the spickspan decks. Are we a motor yacht and no steamer at all?"
"Coal," said Ewing, "belongs to the carboniferous epoch. This is the Twentieth Century and the Age of Oil. The Humming Top is an oil-fired steamship and years before her time. Didn't you know that she was built by Denny's of Dumbarr-r-ton regarr-r-dless of expense? Her original triple-expansion reciprocating engines, driving twin screws, were put on the scrap heap in 1913, the year before the war, and high-speed turbines put in. Their incredible speed of revolution is reduced down to the propeller shafts by helical spur gearing. There were vairy few destroyers in the King's service in 1913 which wouldn't have squirmed with jealousy at the sight of our engine-room. At the same time, Madame, our ancient Scotch boilers with their coal fire-boxes were ripped out, and water-tube boilers, oil fired, installed in place of them. We don't shovel heavy dirty coal, Madame; we simply squirt atomised oil upon the glowing fires. And when we want to replenish our bunkers we don't run under the coal tips and smother our clean decks with filthy black dust; we just connect up with the tanks ashore, and press the switch of an electric pump. You could refill our bunkers yourself, Madame, without soiling your dainty fingers. And with our geared turbines and our oil fuel we have a radius of action which is scarce believable."
"This is most interesting," said Madame. "Though I don't understand machinery, I love it tremendously. And I am nothing if not up-to-date."
"You are up-to-date in the Humming Top; you couldn't be up-to-dater in the Hood. We are a small craft, only a thousand tons yacht measurement, but at this moment we have 155 tons of oil in our side bunkers, and a resairve of 75 tons more in our double bottom in case of emairgency. At this easy toddle of eleven knots we can run seven thousand miles, more than half-way over the big bulge of the world, without replenishment. Which is an advantage, Madame, that later on you will greatly appreciate. If we were coal fired we should need to go under those dirty wagon tips every two thousand miles or thereby. We can steam from here to Panama, or from Panama to Auckland without anxiety about our bunkers—always provided that Captain Ching doesn't get impatient and doesn't try to shove us along at more than eleven knots. If we steam fast there will be a terrible waste, and a great reduction in our radius."
"I shan't hurry," said the Skipper, "though Sir John told me to obey Madame's orders about speed. If he don't mind paying for forced draught, it is no business of mine to spare his pocket."
"Sir John may be rich as Pierpont Morgan," declared the Scot. "But I don't waste good Asiatic oil for anybody's wealth—not at 150 shillings the ton. Oil once burnt doesn't grow again, and posterity will starve for our lustful rapeedity. The cost of this trip is just awful. And for pleasure, too. I am a judeecious, reflective man. Here we are in an empty ship idling across the world when we could have stuffed the yacht full of high-priced cargo at any damn freights we chose to extort. Ching, my commercial conscience racks me like a raging blister. A cabin load each of drugs or dyestuffs would have made our fortunes in South America, yet here we are with half a dozen cabins empty. The wickedness of it scares me. The Humming Top will come to no good when owners fly like yon in the face of the bountiful freights of a kindly Providence. If I may say so without irreverence, we are sacrileegiously biffing the Providential eye."
Captain Ching laughed. He was willing to venture freight on private account when granted an opportunity. But this was a private yachting cruise and orders were orders. If Sir John chose to burn money to please Madame Gilbert—for that is how the long sea trip presented itself to his mind—well, he had plenty to burn, and Madame was well worth pleasing. He, as skipper, was handsomely paid for his job, and that was enough for him. So was Ewing very well paid. But the lost opportunities of plundering South American Dagoes which slid unregarded past the easy-going Devonian just exasperated the Scot from Glasgow.
"Please explain," put in Madame. "How can we gratify the bountiful Providence who is displeased with the Humming Top? I am always careful, when I can, to range Providence on my side."