To my immense surprise, instead of obeying my orders, the Albatross suddenly stood stock-still in the trough of a wave, drifting helplessly about like a log on the ocean.
"Now then," I shouted down again, half angry and half alarmed. "What are you doing there, Jenkins? Didn't you hear what I said? Stir your stumps, my friend! Double time, and forward!"
Imagine my horror when the engineer shouted back in a voice of blank dismay, "I can't, sir. She won't work. Don't answer to the valve. We've injured something in backing her off the reef there."
This was an awkward job. And at such a crisis, too! In a minute I was down in the engine-room myself, inspecting all the valves and bearings with lamp in hand, and with the closest scrutiny. Before long we had ascertained the extent of the injury. A piece of the engine was broken that would certainly take us six or eight hours to repair. And it was already two o'clock on the Wednesday morning!
But that wasn't all, either. Another serious difficulty beset us in our work. We were beating about in the angry sea off the Caycos Reef, with the breakers dashing in, and the surf running high. If we tried to mend the broken engine where we stood, we should infallibly be dashed to pieces on the dangerous shallows. You can't go to work like that on a lee shore, with no engine to fall back upon, and the wind blowing half a gale. The only thing possible for us was to hoist sail and make for the open sea to southward under all canvas. That was taking us further away from Tanaki, of course; but it was our one chance of getting our engine repaired in peace and quiet.
So we hoisted sail and stood out to sea once more, leaving the dim long line of surf gradually behind us on the lee, and beating by constant tacks against the wind, which had now veered to the southeast, and was blowing us straight on to the Caycos shallows.
By four o'clock we'd got so far out that we thought we might lie to a bit and take a few hands off navigating duty to assist the engineer in repairing his engine.
But it proved a much more difficult and lengthy task to retrieve the mischief than we had at first sight at all anticipated. The minutes went by with appalling rapidity. Five o'clock came, and the smith was only just getting his iron well hammered into shape. Six o'clock, and the engineer was still fitting the place it came from. Seven o'clock—something wrong, surely, with the ship's time! Before this hour I had hoped to be anchored off the harbor of Tanaki.
Seven o'clock on Wednesday morning; and by twelve at noon, so the boys assured us, the ovens would be made hot at Taranaka's tomb for those unfortunate prisoners on the remote island!
Oh, how frantically we worked for the next two hours! and how remorselessly everything seemed to turn against us! How is it that whenever one's in the greatest hurry all nature seems to conspire to defeat one's purpose? I won't attempt to explain to you all the petty mishaps and unfortunate failures that attended our efforts. It seemed as if iron, wood, and coal—all inanimate matter itself—was banded together to make our further approach to Tanaki impossible. By nine o'clock I knew the worst myself. The breakdown to the engine was far more serious than we had at first imagined. I felt sure that before noon at earliest, with all our skill and toil, we couldn't possibly repair it.