"In Sargasso." Missing, a romance

by Julius Chambers

I stepped promptly to the rack in which had rested during all these months the long, slender steel lever with which the engine had always been started. I took it down and fitted it in place. Then, having signaled to the boatswain that I was about to make the trial, I quickly opened the valve, and, having allowed a few moments to pass in order that the hot steam might impart some of its warmth to the large pipes and to the cylinder, I swung the lever, as I had often done before on the Caribas and other steamers.

To my horror, the cylinder did not respond. Again and again I shut off the steam and suddenly admitted it, in the hope that the shock might start the rusty piston in the cylinder.

Then I bethought me of a venturesome experiment. Hastily allowing the steam to escape from the upper end of the cylinder, I unscrewed one of the oil cups, and, having procured a pint of sulphuric acid from the locker in which the chemicals were kept, I diluted it three times with water, and poured the mixture into the top of the cylinder. It was a very risky thing to do; but I remembered that diluted sulphuric acid was used for removing verdigris (which is the corrosion on brass, just as rust is the oxidation on iron), and it had seemed to me the most natural way of cleansing the interior of the cylinder. I hastily replaced the oil cup, using the first wrench I could find for the purpose.

I waited ten minutes for the sulphuric acid to accomplish its work. Then I gave the wheel that opened connection with the boilers a savage twist, throwing the valve wide open and suddenly admitting to the cylinder the full head of steam, now registering eighty-five pounds of pressure.

At the first stroke of the lever I knew that the engine was going to work. In twenty seconds more it was running on its own momentum. Its mechanism was somewhat halting and unsteady, but I could feel that the shaft communicating with the propeller was revolving.

I hurried on deck and, with an axe already provided, I cut away the heavy strands of seaweed cable that held us to the adjacent tree trunks. With a few blows of a sledge hammer I knocked the heavy anchor chain out of the bitts, where it had been held for two years, and it escaped overboard through the hawse hole, serpentlike, attended with a noise like thunder.

In a minute more we were steaming along the Grand Canal!

Fidette had been recalled to the engine room, and I was now in the wheelhouse. To my delight I found that the Caribas answered the helm perfectly. As soon as we had emerged from the dock-like berth in which the vessel had been moored into the broad expanse of the Grand Canal I slowly swung the bow of the Caribas to the westward, and headed her out to sea.

We passed so close to the Happy Shark that I could have thrown a biscuit on board. But all was silence thereon. Nowhere in the semi-darkness could I descry a moving object. We were then passing the scene of the attack by the pirates of the Spar, and I recalled all the incidents of that desperate contest. Despite the thrilling sensations of freedom, my ears still rang with the cries of the dying and the shouts of the victors.

Fortunately for me, in my early apprenticeship on the sea, I had served many watches at the wheel. During my stay in Sargasso, with the hope of escape ever present before me, I had taken careful bearings of the Grand Canal as the only recognized watery path to the ocean, and, although it had not a beacon or other commanding headland, I had no fear of misadventure.