He spoke lightly, though there was a suggestion of tension in his voice, and it was evident that both of them were anxious. Indeed, Jefferson fancied that his comrade found it difficult to stand still at all.
"Well?" he said.
"There are a third of them I daren't turn out, and two or three of the others who are down with Tom look a good deal shakier than I care about. Still, you see, I couldn't keep them in. They've had about enough of this country, and I don't blame them. You can figure on about half of us as reasonably effective, but what everybody wants to know is, when we are to begin."
"When you can give me eighty pounds of steam. Then we'll shake her up for an hour or two with reversed propeller, and heave on everything when you get up to the hundred. Still, although we have blown a good deal of the mud out forward, I expect she'll want another fifty before she'll move."
Austin glanced at the gap in the forest beneath the bows, across which the shattered mangroves were strewn. He and Jefferson had gone over all this before, but since he had stopped by the ladder they must talk of something, for silence would have been intolerable just then.
"I'll go down and stir them up, though I'm not sure that they need it," he said.
He disappeared round the deck-house, and now there was nobody to see him, Jefferson paced feverishly up and down the bridge, until Wall-eye, the steward, came pattering barefoot along the deck, with his arm in a sling. Jefferson stopped him with a sign.
"Slip into Mr. Austin's room, and bring me the thermometer he keeps in the little case," he said. "As usual, no comprenny? Casetta de cuero, very chiquitita."
The man went away, and when he came back Jefferson, who went into the wheelhouse, sucked the little clinical thermometer gravely for a minute or two. Then he frowned as he looked at it.
"Ninety-nine, point something. I guess it's coming on again," he said. "Well, one can go on working when it's a good deal more than that, especially when he has to."