Just then the man they were discussing turned toward the bridge, from which the skipper was beckoning him. A minute or two later they went into the room beneath it, and the engineer sat down looking at the man in front of him with narrow, half-open eyes. The latter was young and spruce in trim uniform, a man of no great education, who had a favorable opinion of himself.
"Can't you shove her along a little faster, Robertson?" he said. "We'll be thirty knots behind our usual run at noon."
"No," said the engineer, in a curious listless drawl. "I've been letting the revolutions down. That high-pressure piston's getting on my nerves again."
"Shouldn't have thought you had any worth speaking of," said the skipper, with a quick sign of impatience. "You give one the impression that they've gone to pieces long ago. Take a drink, and tone them up."
He flung a bottle on the table, and watched his companion's long greasy fingers fumble at it with a look of disgust. Robertson half-filled his glass with the yellow spirit, and drained it with slow enjoyment. Then he breathed hard, and, leaning his elbows on the table, looked at the skipper heavily.
"Well," he said, "you want something?"
"I do," said the skipper, and taking down a chart unrolled one part of it. "I want to shake her up until we get away from the Shasta, for one thing. Wheelock has been hanging on to us as far as his boat's speed will allow it the last two or three runs. I can't quite figure what he's after."
Robertson looked almost startled for a moment as though an unpleasant thought had occurred to him, but his heavy, puffy face sank into its usual lethargicness again.
"Wants to scoop your passengers. Done it once or twice," he said. "Well?"
"For another thing, I want to get round this nest of islands before the breeze that's brewing comes down on us. It will be a snorter. If I were surer of your—old engines, I'd try the inside passage, though the tides run strong. Now, if I head her up well clear of the islands I'm throwing miles away, and letting the Shasta in ahead of me. Wheelock has apparently an engineer who will stand by him."