“We shall run into the ship tracks from all the northern Gulf ports to Europe.”
“I know, and we must take our chance of not being spotted. For a western sea there’s a regular string of traffic tailing down to the Dry Tortugas. There you are, for one. Look at that old wind-jammer.”
He jerked with his thumb towards a green-painted wooden Italian barque, which was squattering past less than a quarter of a mile away, right athwart the last rays of the windy sunset. She was driving merrily homewards, sending her bows into it till the seas creamed against her cat-heads and darkened her jibs with brine up more than half their height. She was methodically reducing sail, and a dozen many-hued, picturesque tatterdemalions were aloft on the fore-topgallant yard hammering the struggling canvas into the gaskets.
“The cowardly Dagos,” said Kettle; “that’s always their way. Snug down to topsails as soon as it gets dark, even if there’s only a cat’s-paw blowing. By James! with a breeze like this I’d be carrying royals on that old tub. And yet,” he went on, with his beard in the heel of his fist, and his eyes gazing out over the tumbling waters—“and yet they say there used to be poetry in a craft of that sort, whilst there never was, and never will be, with a steamer. I suppose the reason is, that a poet has to be a man who knows nothing whatever about what he writes upon. I know that some chaps who string verses nowadays have been on a steamboat and smelt the smells of her, and seen her lines, and watched the men who do the work; and yet they make no poetry about it. But of the old crew who wrote about moaning harbor-bars, and fair white pinions, and lusty wooden walls, and trusty hearts of oak—why, they knew no more about the thing than a London bobby does of angels. And that, I suppose, was why their stuff is called poetry, and the lubberly old wind-jammers poetical. You give me a smart steamboat, Mr. Onslow; there’s all the romance on her an old sailorman’s got any use for; and he understands it, too, even if he can’t put it down on paper.”
“I believe you’re right,” said Onslow thoughtfully, “and some day a new Dana or a new Michael Scott will come ashore from the upper bridge, or from an electric-lighted forecastle, or from a forced-draught engine-room, and show it to us plainly; whereupon we shall swear that we saw it for ourselves all along. But,” he went on, with a sudden frown, “for the present let that drift. You and I have enough to think of in our immediate present without speculating over a possible prophet which is to arise.”
“We have; but so much must be arranged by the chance of the moment that I don’t see we can do much good by talking it over now. All arrangements that can be made ahead, I fancy we’ve got fixed up already. By the way, I suppose you are sure that your explosion in the forehold won’t be too big? It would be an awkward do for us if the old ship’s bottom was really blown out in sober earnest.”
The sun had gone entirely out by this time, and the young moon was sailing high amid scurrying cloud-banks. In the white and shifting light, Patrick Onslow’s face looked pale and anxious.
“You’re sure,” Kettle repeated, “it won’t be a case of the engineer being hoisted with his own thingammy?”
“No, I’m not sure; and that’s what bothers me. You see, one couldn’t quite get an expert to measure out the precise necessary dose, and I’ve had to guess at it. I daren’t undercharge my bomb. If our explosion was a fizzle, and the crew didn’t get scared and run, why then they’d take her up to New Orleans whether we liked it or not; and she’d be examined. Then that intake valve couldn’t be missed, and it couldn’t be explained away. Man, as you know, the thing’s as big as a sluice-gate!”
“All the bilge pumps in the Gulf of Mexico couldn’t make headway against that valve, once it was fairly opened. It’s the quickest and cleverest way of scuttling a steamboat I ever heard of or read about. But I don’t quite see how the valve is going to be turned.”