CHAPTER X.
OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS.
At intervals along the bridge we have mentioned as running between bow and stern superstructures, were tall standpipes connected with pumps in the engine-room. These were used in discharging the cargo at Antwerp.
The valves of these pipes had been opened while the boys were in the wireless room, and now, as the pumps were started, jets of thick, dark-colored oil spouted from them.
As the oil spread on the sea, the wind drove it down in a great band of filmy smoothness toward the tossing wreck. As the oil spread, the big combers ceased to break dangerously, and a shimmering, smooth skin of oil spread over them till they merely rolled beneath it.
It was like magic to see the way in which the oil calmed the troubled sea.
“Well, I’ve heard my father tell of skinning a sea with oil-bags,” said Jack, “but I never expected to see it done.”
“You’ll see stranger things than that if you stay long enough in this business,” said Raynor sententiously.
The Ajax slowly cruised around the floundering wreck under reduced speed, with oil spouting constantly from the standpipes. At last all about the hulk there was spread a sort of magic circle of smooth, oily water.
Jack looked on in an agony of impatience.