Nothing further was said upon the subject just then; but, the calm continuing all night and all the next day, I several times caught Cunningham with paper before him and a pencil in his hand, sketching and calculating. And when the next day also proved calm, and our observations showed that we had not progressed a couple of miles upon our journey, the skipper again addressed Cunningham upon the subject, asking him half-jestingly if he had not yet been able to devise some scheme to turn the eternal rolling to account.
“Oh yes!” answered Cunningham; “I dare say I could rig up some sort of an arrangement, if it were worth while. But it would be rather a cumbersome contrivance to ship and unship, and I would not recommend it unless there is likely to be much of this sort of thing between here and our destination.”
“Well,” said the skipper, “I reckon we may depend pretty certainly upon at least a fortnight of ca’ms afore we arrive at that there oyster bed; and it’d be worth a whole lot to me to get there a fortnight ahead of the Kingfisher. What’s the thing like that you’ve invented, Mister, and could we knock it up out o’ the stuff as we’ve got aboard?”
“Oh yes!” answered Cunningham, “I have kept strictly in mind our capabilities in the preparation of my sketch. I could easily devise a much better and more efficient concern, I am sure; but that would be quite useless to you, because we have neither the materials nor the skilled labour aboard to produce it. But,” he continued, producing a pencil and paper and beginning to sketch rapidly, “I think we might manage to knock together a contrivance of this sort. There would be two of them, you understand, one on each side of the ship. This represents a stout timber frame, which would be secured in place by short lengths of chain bowsed taut by tackles, so that it would remain rigidly in position. It would reach from the rail down to about three feet below the surface of the water. This outrigger arrangement, which should be about nine feet long, will serve as the attachment for what we may call a fin, made of flexible planking securely fixed at its fore end to the outrigger, but quite free to move at the other end. Now this fin, being submerged when the frame is fixed in place, will be acted upon by the pressure of the water as the ship rolls, and will bend alternately upward and downward at an angle, the effect being that every time the ship rolls the bent fin will force backward a considerable quantity of water, or, what is the same thing, will have a tendency to thrust the ship forward at a rate which I estimate at—well, say about three knots per hour.”
“Three knots an hour,” repeated the skipper. “’Tain’t very much, is it? I thought, maybe, that you’d be able to fix up somethin’ that ’d shove her along at about ten or twelve knots.”
Cunningham laughed as he shook his head. “Come, come, Captain!” he protested, “be reasonable. To get ten or twelve knots out of this schooner you would require a steam engine of some eighty to a hundred horse power.”
“Ay,” admitted the skipper, rather unwillingly, “I s’pose I should. Three knots an hour. That’s, in round figures, seventy miles from noon to noon. And that, for, say, fourteen days, is—how much?”
“Nine hundred and eighty miles; call it a thousand,” answered Cunningham.
“A thousand miles. Jings! It mounts up when you come to look at it that way,” averred the skipper. “Look here, Mister,” he continued, after thinking for a minute, “how long do you reckon it would take you to fix up that concarn of yours?”
“Oh, not very long,” answered Cunningham. “The very roughest of workmanship would do, so long as it was strong. I dare say Chips and I could put it together in—well—say four days.”