“Steam on the engine!” he said to Mike and Red.
The two castaways went through the stokehold doorway. The shovels grated on the iron apron before the double fire-boxes. A biting Scotch oath rolled into the engine-room. Micky eyed the steam-gage on the main steam pipe. It was climbing. He glanced upward. The ferocious Russian was standing guard with the rifle. Ivan had disappeared.
Days passed in unending drudgery. Food was lowered down at the end of a line. The sentry was changed each watch. Ivan kept away from the companion, though his voice was heard in loud argument concerning the position of the freighter. Micky, stripped to his sweating waist and smarting from the blows he had received, grinned through the knuckle-thick bristle on his lips.
He kept the engines oiled. He saw to it that the throttle-wheel was wide open. Once he relieved Mike at passing coal. The ship made progress of a kind. It was evident that the citizen captain had headed for the center of the north Pacific. There was little danger of a lee shore.
“And may he wander like the Flyin’ Dutchman!” said Mike Monkey on the sixteenth day. “Ah hope he’s lost.”
“No,” said Red Landyard, “he’s heading somewhere. The course is always east. I can tell by the sun. He hasn’t changed a quarter point.”
Micky McMasters glared at his two mates. They resembled stokers of Hades. Their skin was blistered. The callouses on their hands had become small cushions. The fighting fire in their eyes alone remained to remind the little cockney skipper what manner of men they were and had been.
“The plot,” said Micky, “is thick and ’ard to fathom. For why are they ’eadin’ to the States or Canada? No one wants them over there. They’ll run their bloody ’eads hinto a noose.”
Mike Monkey cocked a grease-lined ear. He blinked.