I kept calling it out and Furlong kept banging it away on the key.
The flag-lieutenant sticks his head in. "What shall the commissary yeoman do with the tobacco and the tea?"
Furlong hollers to tear out the tin-foil and bring it up to him. They brought it up, and a couple of Slavs, who had been working the tallow into the shape of condensing-plates—helped out by two electric fans and a stream of ice-water playing on them—they wrap the tin-foil around the tallow plates.
"Mould some more!" yells Furlong—"and keep mouldin' 'em!"
As fast as one set would melt, out they'd ship another. There was plenty of tallow—those Russian ships they're greasy with tallow—and dozens of cases of tobacco and Lord knows how many boxes of tea. It was a stirring sight below, with a dozen or so wild Slavs in their underclothes smashing things open with axes and tobacco and tea flying around regardless. Every blessed Russian that had a samovar and could get hold of hot water begins to make tea. There must have been a division of them sitting around between decks—at two in the morning—drinking hot tea and sweating like horses, for it was hotter than—oh, but it was hot that night!
"More tallow plates!" yells Furlong.
They had a carpenter's mate drafted below, a Finlander with a good eye, and he was cutting out swell plates with a chisel, and as fast as he did they would wrap them in the tin-foil and the two Slavs would squeeze them into place.
Sure-enough sea-going condensing-plates those tallow inventions of Furlong's were, and they did the business till the chief engineer reported he had steam up, and we started to put out. "And now," says the flag-lieutenant to Furlong, "your noble exertions are to be rewarded. You shall see how we shall catch that Plantagenet ship!"
"And a good job," I says to Furlong. "I hope they blow her out of water when they do get her." Which sets him to studying.
"Say, Cahalan," he asks, "you don't suppose they'd do that?"