No sailor is partial to calms. A gale he fights with a sense of elation and a resolve to conquer; a favoring breeze he considers his right; but a glassy sea and listless, drooping sails are his especial horror. Nevertheless, he is accustomed to endure this tedium and has learned by long experience how best to enliven such depressing periods.
Our men found they possessed a violinist—not an unskilled fiddler by any means—and to his accompanying strains they sang and danced like so many happy children.
Uncle Naboth and Ned Britton played endless games of penocle under the deck awning and I brought out my favorite books and stretched myself in a reclining chair to enjoy them.
Duncan Moit paced deliberately up and down for the first two days, engrossed in his own musings; then he decided to go over his machine and give it a careful examination. He removed the cover, started his engines, and let them perform for the amusement of the amazed sailors, who formed a curious but respectful group around him.
Finally they cleared a space on the deck and Moit removed the guy-ropes that anchored his invention and ran his auto slowly up and down, to the undisguised delight of the men. He would allow six or eight to enter the car and ride—sixteen feet forward, around the mainmast, and sixteen feet back again—and it was laughable to watch the gravity of their faces as they held fast to the edge, bravely resolving to endure the dangers of this wonderful mode of locomotion. Not one had ever ridden in an automobile before, and although Moit merely allowed it to crawl over its confined course, the ride was a strange and fascinating experience to them.
I must allow that the performances of this clever machine astonished me. The inventor was able to start it from his seat, by means of a simple lever, and it was always under perfect control. The engines worked so noiselessly that you had to put your ear close in order to hear them at all, and the perfection of the workmanship could not fail to arouse my intense admiration.
“If this new metal is so durable as you claim,” I said to Moit, “the machine ought to last for many years.”
“My claim is that it is practically indestructible,” he answered, in a tone of conviction.
“But you have still the tire problem,” I remarked. “A puncture will put you out of business as quickly as it would any other machine.”
“A puncture!” he exclaimed. “Why, these tires cannot puncture, sir.”