“I guess you don’t know what can be done in fine coal with a stream of water when you bore it in,” snapped the fireman. “That wire-tailed gabumpus wasn’t in there five minutes. He has laid in wait and watched me sprinkle coal. He turned her on full bent and bored. I’ll get him, and I’ll get him good!” His smudged face went out of sight down the ladder.
There are some ideas in this life which steal up on a man and whisper to him, and keep whispering for a long time, until at last he overhears—and then he plans and toils, and in the end an invention results.
Then there are other ideas which march up to a man and hit him on the head.
Twenty tons of coal shifted in five minutes by a monkey and a hose! The idea that hit me was like a hammer blow. My head wasn’t clear all at once; I was dizzy. The details were hazy—but there was the idea hammering at me. It was such a glorious idea that I walked aft to that ensign mast, looked up, and took off my hat to that monkey. I know he misunderstood my act. I know he cursed me as another enemy. But I did not care. I had got used to being misunderstood and underrated aboard the Zizania.
I turned around and found the girl looking at me with wide-open eyes. “This isn’t insanity,” I told her. “It doesn’t run in the Sidney family. But an idea has just come to me out of a monkey’s prank, and it’s such a wonderful idea that I don’t dare to talk about it until I have thought it over. I guess you’ll have to excuse me, Miss Kama; I’ve got to go into my state-room and pound at that idea while it is hot.”
I did not sleep much that night. I was wrestling with a notion as the old chap in the Bible wrestled with the angel. And when morning came I was positive that an angel of a notion had come to me. I told Captain Holstrom at breakfast that I was not going down that day. But when he turned a doleful look at me I grinned so amiably that he snapped his eyes, thinking, perhaps, that he was not seeing just straight.
“I’ll have something to tell you later, Captain. It’ll sound better to you when I have made certain that we have got stuff aboard here to work out an idea.”
That became my business after breakfast—to hunt the Zizania over for certain material. I invited Captain Holstrom along with me, and took two men for helpers.
My first quest was for hose. The Zizania carried canvas hose for fire purposes, stacked here and there on racks. It was not in prime condition, for the old Zizania had been condemned along with her equipment as far as Government purposes went.
We got that hose down and measured it, and found rising two hundred feet of stuff that was serviceable. I needed three hundred feet to cover the distance between the lighter and the wreck. I made inquiries about canvas. The steamer had a suit of sails for her two masts, and the sails had been unbent some time before and were stored. Before the day was over Mate Number-two Jones had men at work cutting that canvas and sewing it into hose of a diameter to fit the fire-hose. Of course, it was crude work, but I was obliged to do the best I could with the materials at hand.