“Oh, damn my arm!” cried the other impatiently, evidently more anxious about the machinery than his arm. “Have you shut off the steam?”
“Yes, sir,” replied his subordinate calmly. “I closed all the stop valves up here the moment I knew what had happened; and the men below in the stoke-hold have cut off the supply from the main pipe, while Mr Links has gone into the screw well to disconnect the propeller.”
“Very good, Grummet. So they be all right down below?”
“All right, sir.”
“Thank God for that! How about the fires?”
“Drowned out, sir, all but the one under the fire boiler on the starboard side.”
“You’d better look after that, to keep the bilge-pumps going, or else it’ll be all drowned out, with this lot of water coming down the hatchway every time the ship rolls! I do hope the skipper will lie-to and keep her head to sea until we can get the engines going again, though I’m afraid that’ll be a long job!”
Before Grummet could reply to this, Stoddart, the second officer, or rather engineer, came scrambling down from the saloon, where he had been assisting Garry O’Neil in making poor Jackson comfortable, the escape of the steam having evidently told its own tale to an expert like himself.
Although a younger man than Mr Stokes, his brains were considerably sharper and he was a better mechanic in every way; so now, when, after examining the damage done to the cylinder, he made light of the accident, instead of groaning over it like the old chief. Mr Fosset, I could see, and with him myself also, who shared his belief, saw that the injury was not irreparable and that it might certainly have been worse.
“Of course it can’t be done in a day!” Stoddart said; “still it can be patched up.”