The petty officer thrust an iron bar suddenly into the heart of the complicated machine. Something snapped. The mechanism stopped.
"Great heavens, man!" gasped the warrant officer, "suppose you had set it off?"
"No. Couldn't be done till the spring here was wound up to the top-notch. This machine was arranged to run for weeks. Some ingenious arrangement, take it from me!"
The discovery and destruction of the infernal machine, and a big one at that, relieved the tension of feeling aboard the warship. As Frenchy Donahue remarked:
"It's bad enough to have a banshee tick-tocking around the place; but that tidy little bunch of cylinders would have made a lot more noise if they had been exploded."
But the matter was serious. The captain took the opportunity to lecture the entire ship's company regarding foolish rumors and gossip.
"If there is anything strange comes under your notice, report it properly," he said. "Don't camouflage it with a lot of superstitious nonsense so that the officer you report to must disbelieve the yarn. There never was a strange occurrence yet that could not be explained."
"How does he explain Jonah being swallowed by the whale?" whispered Frenchy.
"He doesn't have to explain it," retorted Torry. "If you don't believe a whale can swallow a man, jump down the throat of the next one you see."
As a whole, the crew of the Kennebunk were not inclined to consider the incident of the infernal machine carelessly. A serious impression was made upon them all.