“What!” I shrieked.
“Yes, sir. The motor's locked up in there with fuel enough to keep her going for three months. I can't stop her or move the rudder without getting into the case, and nothing but dynamite would dent that case!”
“Then, Hawkins,” I said, a terrible calm coming over me, “we shall have to go straight ahead now until we hit something or are blown up. Am I right?”
“Quite right,” muttered Hawkins, defiantly. “And it's all your fault!”
I transfixed the inventor with a vindictive stare, until he abandoned the attempt at bravado and looked away.
“We—we may blow back, you know,” he said, vaguely, addressing the breeze.
“The chances of that being particularly favorable by reason of your having set your miserable rudder to correspond with the present wind?” I asked. “Can't we tear up the woodwork and contrive some sort of rudder?”
“We could,” admitted Hawkins, “if it wasn't all riveted down with my own patented rivets, which can't be removed, once they're set.”
Hawkins' rivets are really what they claim to be. Only one consideration has delayed their universal adoption. They cost a trifle less than one dollar apiece to manufacture and set.
But they stay where they are put, and I knew that if the launch's woodwork was held together by them, it wasn't likely to come apart much before Judgment Day.