CHAPTER XVI
At eight o'clock Mr. Schultz relieved the second mate on the bridge, and five minutes later Terence Reardon, for the first time invaded that forbidden territory. “Bad cess to me!” he complained plaintively. “I'm the picthur av bad luck. I've a leaky connection below an' divil a bit av red lead. Could ye lind me a dab av red lead from yer shtore-room, Misther Schultz?”
Mr. Schultz marvelled that any man could force his mind to dwell on red lead, leaky pipe connections, sulphur and bedbugs in a ship like the Narcissus at a time like this. He had met a few innocents in his day, but this Irish engineer was most innocent of all.
“Sure, Mike!” he replied, and grinned at his feeble play on words. “Und as I gannot leave der bridge yet, here iss der key to der store-room. Helb yourself, mine Freund, und den gif me der key back.”
“Ye addie-pated son of sin!” Mr. Reardon soliloquized as he took the key and departed. “Faith, a booby birrd has more sinse nor you! D'ye suppose I didn't wait until ye were on djooty before axin' ye, well knowin' ye'd lind me the key an' I'd be alone in yer shtore-room!”
Mr. Reardon was in the store-room less than two minutes. When he emerged he carried a daub of red lead on an old spoon, as Mr. Schultz, looking down on the dimly lighted main deck, observed. What he did not observe, however, was the chief's action in tossing the spoon overboard the instant he passed beyond the range of Mr. Schultz's vision. It is probable, also, that the mate would have been disturbed could he have seen Mr. Reardon in his state-room, with the door locked, removing from beneath his dungaree jumper several fathoms of light, strong, cotton signal halyard, two five-foot lengths of half-inch steel chain, and a strip of canvas. His pockets also gave up two padlocks, with keys to fit. This loot Mr. Reardon very carefully hid in the space under his settee, after which, with due thanks, he returned the key to Mr. Schultz.
The remainder of the evening until nine-thirty Terence spent in the wireless room with Herr von Staden. Then he retired, very low in spirits, to his state-room, to make his preparations for wholesale assault with a deadly weapon—possibly wholesale murder! He cut the signal halyard into short lengths; then he cut the piece of canvas into strips about two inches wide and secreted the halyard and canvas strips here and there about his person. Then he descended to the engine room and selected his monkey wrench from the tool rack on the wall, helped himself to a handful of cotton waste, and returned to his state-room mournfully keening “The Sorrowful Lamentation of Callaghan, Greally and Mullen, killed at the Fair of Turloughmore.”
“Wirra,” he murmured presently, “but 'tis a terrible thing to hit an unsuspectin' man wit' a monkey wrench! An' that divil von Staden, for all his faults, is not a bad lad at all at all. An' I'd give five dollars—yes, seven an' a half—if he were bald an' shiny on any other shpot save an' exceptin' the shpot I have to hit him. Ochone!