Mr. Goble regarded him reflectively.
"Is that a fact?" he said. "Weel, I'll bide too."
And so a third member was co-opted on to the Board of Directors.
"We'd better get out of sight," said Hughie. "They won't like leaving us behind. I think I know a good place to wait. Come along."
The trio slipped round behind the chart-house, passed along a deserted stretch of the deck, and disappeared down the engine-room hatchway.
The engine-room was illuminated by a couple of swinging lanterns. A black and greasy flood of water glistened on the iron floor below, filling the crank-pits and covering the propeller-shaft. The doors leading to the stokehold were standing open, and they could see that the floors there too were flooded, though the water had not reached the level of the fire-bars. Owing to the immobility of the ship, its oily surface was almost unruffled, and the engine-room itself was curiously quiet after the turmoil on deck. The fires were burning low, but occasionally a glowing clinker slipped from between the bars into the blood-red flood beneath, with a sizzling splash. The steam was hissing discontentedly in the gauges.
The Salvage Board stood knee-deep in the water of the engine-room.
Hughie picked up a smoky inspection-lamp,—a teapot-like affair with a wick in the spout,—lit it, and peered about.
"Now look here," he said, "I don't quite know where this water came from, and it doesn't much matter, as no more is coming in at present. If the old man means to sink the ship he will have to come down here to do it. He has probably got some dodge arranged by which he can just turn a wheel and open a valve and send her to the bottom. Isn't that the idea, Goble? (I'll explain to you afterwards, Allerton.) My impression is that he'll pop down and turn the valve on just before he leaves. In that case one of us must stand by and turn it off again. You two go through into the stokehold. He's not likely to come in there. If he does, you must use your own discretion. I'll wait here, on the far side of the cylinders, up against the condenser. He's not likely to see me, but I shall be able to watch him and see which valve-wheel he turns on."
The other two obeyed, and Hughie, scrambling across the bed-plates of the engines, ensconced himself behind a convenient cross-head, with his feet in a flooded crank-pit and his body squeezed back as far as possible into the shadow of the condenser.