We walked down a central gangway and stopped by two powerful gasolene engines, one on each side—long, lean, polished monsters, that lay inert, but ready to leap into action on the turn of a switch and the pulling of a lever.
"Those are the engines which run the boat when we are on the surface—'awash,' we call it. We can do seventeen knots then—I am assuming that this German boat is about equal to one of our own of its class, though I have already come across several remarkable improvements in her. We are running now by electric motor and doing about twelve knots, which is first-class, but I'm pushing her along for all I know."
We passed onwards and to where Bosustow stood beaming over three great purring, spitting dynamos, a piece of cotton waste in one huge paw.
"Oh, they're daisies, sir," he said, as he patted coils of insulated wire in an ecstasy of appreciation. "They can show us something, sir, the Germans can. The sleeve that carries the commutator is keyed to the armature shaft on an entirely new system; it's a fair miracle of ingenuity. But where they beat us hollow is in the accumulators. I've not had time to inspect them thoroughly, but if we get out of this, then the whole of our system will have to be altered."
We all bent over a rail towards the great accumulator tanks below, and I felt a faint, acrid odour rising up from them.
"You're smelling electricity, sir," said Bosustow to me. Then he turned to a big, table-like switch-board which controlled the flow of current from below and commanded all the electrical machinery on board. He fingered the big, vulcanite handles as if he loved them and stroked the shining flanged rim of the volt meter as a mother strokes her child.
"Now Mr. Carey understands something about machinery, Bosustow," said my brother. "You can trust him to follow out your directions without making any blunders, I think. John, your station will be by Bosustow until you are wanted forrard, but there is no need for you to stay now. There is a good deal more that I must say."
All the voices were sharp and staccato, my own sounded like that in my ears when I answered. They echoed and rang in the heavy air of the sealed, steel tube, voices that were not quite free and natural, for all their readiness of tone.
We turned and went forward again, passing an open doorway and a few steps which led upwards to the conning-tower. The gangway ran at each side of it.
The long, tunnel-like vista grew narrower and the roof began to slope downward to a point. In front of us, in the extreme bows of the boat, were two huge, circular steel doors, like the doors of a safe, clamped and locked by an intricate mechanism.