Two minutes after, we shaved the angle of the channel and headed straight for Plum Beach Point.
That engine, given fuel, certainly was a sweet-running piece of metal.
CHAPTER II.
A BIT OF ACTING.
For the next ten minutes I was too busy tuning the launch up to her best performance to pay much attention to the others, or even to realize the oddity of my position.
I refilled the grease cups, which I found had run pretty low, screwed them down to a good tension, and gave a look at the sight tubes of the automatic oiler.
Of course, the engine, new to me, was a bit of a problem. Twice she choked—not to a stop, but enough to make Stevens cast an apprehensive eye back at me. A quarter turn of the needle valve did the trick, though; and, as though she were chortling at a mischievous prank, she settled down to a steady, mile-eating gurgle.
Finally—it was just about as we were quitting the harbor for the open Sound—I found time to flop myself down upon the engineer’s transom and size up the situation.
Stevens, the skipper, was no problem at all. I had him right on my thumb nail. His like are to be encountered the yacht world over. A punctilious, efficient commander of any kind of a pleasure vessel from two hundred feet to twenty overall length. No great head on him, but a perfect wonder at taking orders and obeying them. And dumb as a bivalve.
The owner bothered me far more; partly, as was natural, from the fact that I didn’t get one really fair-and-square look at him. He stood squarely beside Stevens at the wheel, his watch in his palm, and his eyes never off the water ahead. This I did notice, though: his head, in the intensity of his gaze, had a trick of settling forward and down. Not a crouch, but buzzardlike and scouring.
Somehow I caught myself fancying that I’d recognize that attitude when I saw it again. Events, however, will prove that I wasn’t quite as smart as I thought I was.