“Yes, glad to, and he thinks he's got another man. He's what he calls out his way a 'tenderfoot,' he says, but he's game and can be depended on. Have you made up your mind where she'll cross?”—and he bent over the chart.
The Captain picked up a pair of compasses, balanced them for a moment in his fingers, and with the precision of a seamstress threading a needle, dropped the points astride a wavy line known as the steamer track.
The engineer nodded:
“That will give us about twenty-two hours leeway,” he said gravely, “if we make twelve knots.”
“Yes, if you make twelve knots: can you do it?”
“I can't say; depends on that gang of shovellers and the way they behave. They're a tough lot—jail-birds and tramps, most of 'em. If they get ugly there ain't but one thing left; that, I suppose, you won't object to.”
The Captain paused for a moment in deep thought, glanced at the pin prick in the chart, and said with a certain forceful meaning in his voice:
“No—not if there's no other way.”
The Chief Engineer waited, as if for further reply, replaced his cap, and stepped out into the wind. He had got what he came for, and he had got it straight.
With the closing of the door the Captain rolled up the chart, laid it in its place among the others, readjusted the thong of his so'wester, stopped for a moment before a photograph of his wife and child, looked at it long and earnestly, and then mounted the stairs to the bridge. With the exception that the line of his mouth had straightened and the knots in his eyebrows tightened, he was, despite the smoking-room critics, the same bluff, determined sea-dog who had defied the Manager the week before.