"Rig the lifting tackles while she cools," said Robertson. "Get the stud-nuts loose. We'll have the cover off soon as we can."
Then he turned and saw, as he had partly expected, a quartermaster standing just inside the door above him, and with a word or two to his second he crawled back up the ladder and went with the man to the room beneath the bridge. The young skipper who stood there with a furrowed face regarded him grimly.
"How long are you going to be before you start her again?" he asked.
Robertson blinked at him with furtive, half-open eyes. "I don't quite know—it's a heavy job. We have to heave the piston up," he said. "Besides that, she has knocked things loose below."
The skipper appeared to have some difficulty in restraining himself.
"Unless you can get steam on her in the next few hours she'll be breaking up by morning. The reefs to lee of us are not the kind of ones I'd like to put a steamer ashore on, either."
Then he took a bottle from a drawer with a little grimace of disgust, for he remembered that skippers are comparatively plentiful, and the man he could scarcely keep his hands off was for some reason apparently a favorite with his employer.
"Oh, take a drink, and hump yourself," he said. "I guess that's the only thing to put a move on you."
Robertson hesitated for a moment, for he realized that he had still a part to play. Then it occurred to him that his companion might draw his own conclusions as to his reasons for any unusual abstemiousness, and he helped himself liberally.
"Well," he said when he had drained his glass, "I'll be getting back again. Do what I can—but it's a heavy job."