"Just between gentlemen, that isn't done, young man. But if you volunteered the information, and I saw fit to make you a present of, say, a pipe, with a box of tobacco——"
"What do you want to know for?"
"I guess you know."
The Red Un knew quite well. The Chief and the two Seconds were still playing their game, and the Chief was still winning; but even the Red Un did not know how the Chief won—and as for the two Seconds and the Third and the Fourth, they were quite stumped.
This was the game: In bad weather, when the ports are closed and first-class passengers are yapping for air, it is the province of the engine room to see that they get it. An auxiliary engine pumps cubic feet of atmosphere into every cabin through a series of airtrunks.
So far so good. But auxiliaries take steam; and it is exceedingly galling to a Junior or Senior, wagering more than he can afford on the run in his watch, to have to turn valuable steam to auxiliaries—"So that a lot of blooming nuts may smoke in their bunks!" as the Third put it.
The first move in the game is the Chief's, who goes to bed and presumably to sleep. After that it's the engine-room move, which gives the first class time to settle down and then shuts off the airpumps. Now there is no noise about shutting off the air in the trunks. It flows or it does not flow. The game is to see whether the Chief wakens when the air stops or does not. So far he had always wakened.
It was uncanny. It was worse than that—it was damnable! Did not the Old Man sleep at all?—not that he was old, but every Chief is the Old Man behind his back. Everything being serene, and the engine-room clock marking twelve-thirty, one of the Seconds would shut off the air very gradually; the auxiliary would slow down, wheeze, pant and die—and within two seconds the Chief's bell would ring and an angry voice over the telephone demand what the several kinds of perdition had happened to the air! Another trick in the game to the Chief!
It had gone past joking now: had moved up from the uncanny to the impossible, from the impossible to the enraging. Surreptitious search of the Chief's room had shown nothing but the one locked drawer. They had taken advantage of the Chief's being laid up in Antwerp with a boil on his neck to sound the cabin for hidden wires. They had asked the ship's doctor anxiously how long a man could do without sleep. The doctor had quoted Napoleon.