“El Draque has come again to the Spanish Main,” said Ramon Bazán, fondly regarding his commander. “Remember now! The treasure chart is wrapped in the rubber cloth, under my shirt, Ricardo. Now take me into my own room and you get yourself all settled comfortably in here where you belong.”
To the Valkyrie came a breathing spell. Outwardly she was an unlovely little ocean tramp which had seen much better days, plodding along the Colombian coast on some humdrum errand to earn a pittance by begging cargoes from port to port. Her discolored sides rolled to the regular impulses of the sea and the propeller blades flailed the water into foam. A banner of black smoke trailed from the shabby funnel and spread behind her in a dirty smudge.
The early morning weather had been kind to these argonauts. During the forenoon, however, Mr. Duff cocked a knowing eye at the barometer and sniffed the warm breeze. It was damper than he liked. His feet pained him more than usual. His broken arches had warned him of more than one sudden gale of wind and rain. He mentioned his misgivings to Captain Cary who received them with respect. They set about doing what they could to make things secure, swinging the boats inboard and lashing them, covering hatches, attending to odds and ends neglected in the haste of departure.
Even while they toiled, the sky grew overcast and the sea lost its sparkle. The wind veered this way and that before it began to blow strongly out of the east. It threatened to blow much harder. The crew realized that the Valkyrie was ill-prepared to endure furious weather. They laid aside all ideas of plotting mutiny. It was more essential to save themselves from drowning.
By noon the steamer was wallowing in a gray waste of raging water. She rolled with a sickening motion as if about to turn bottom up. The seas broke solid on her decks and poured through smashed skylights, through the leaky joints of deadlights, through weather-cracked doors. When pounded and submerged like this, the ship was not much tighter than a basket.
Leaving Mr. Duff on the bridge, Richard Cary went down to the engine-room. He found a red-eyed, haggard Charlie Burnham hanging to the throttle valve with both hands to ease her or to jam ahead when the indicator bell whirred like an alarm clock. Water was slashing over the greasy floor plates. The first assistant was up to his waist in the filth of the bilge, trying to clear the pumps of the loose coal which had choked the suction pipe. He was a small man limp with seasickness and bruises. When he stooped over to try to claw the coal away and free the suction strainer, the water boiled over his head as the ship rolled far down.
Cary crawled over and pulled him out of the bilge. Here was a job for a man of more height and strength. He plunged in himself and was working with the energy of a dredge when Charlie Burnham slid across the floor to yell in his ear:
“The pumps are drawing a little, sir. You can clear it if anybody can. If you don’t, it’s good-night. We’ve got to keep the water down or it will put out the fires.”
Cary wiped the floating grease from his eyes and grunted:
“I’ll do my best to clear it, Charlie, if I have to stand on my head. How is she steaming?”