It was well into the forenoon before Johnny Kent found a breathing-spell and climbed above to confer with the skipper. The indomitable engineer appeared aged and haggard. The pain of his burns distressed him and he was spent with worry and weariness. His hands trembled as he pulled himself up the bridge stairway.
“I ain’t as young as I was, Cap’n Mike,” he huskily exclaimed. “Blamed if I don’t feel kind of strained and shook up, same as the poor old Fearless. Looks like one of them fair-weather gales, don’t it? Bright sky and a big sea and wind to peel your whiskers off before night.”
“’Tis a good guess,” soberly replied O’Shea. “Can we weather it, Johnny?”
“I don’t want to make the ladies nervous and fretty,” confided the chief, “but we ain’t keepin’ the water down, Cap’n Mike. It will be in the fire-room before dark at this rate——”
“And then she will fall off into the trough of the sea and founder,” said O’Shea. “And we have no boats. Will your men stay on duty and keep her going?”
“They will, Cap’n Mike. The big nigger feels spry enough to turn to, and the gang is scared to death of him. They believe he’ll murder ’em if they quit on me.”
“Well, Johnny, make steam as long as ye can, and if the weather will not moderate I can try to fetch up somewhere before she goes to the bottom.”
“I ain’t particularly anxious, Cap’n Mike. I never saw you in a hole you couldn’t work your way out of. Of course, there’s the ladies. How are they, anyhow? The young one is on deck, lookin’ like a morning-glory. But what about Miss Hollister? She ain’t sick, is she?”
“Van Steen says the flurry last night gave her a sort of nervous prostration,” answered O’Shea. “She is up and dressed now and taking it easy in her room. Maybe ye would like to duck in and hand her a few kind words.”
“I sure would,” and Johnny Kent beamed. “Ladies like her are mighty refined and delicate and sensitive, and they’re liable to be took with this nervous prostration. I don’t blame her a bit, Cap’n Mike. Why, when we piled up on that reef and the gun-boat was fixin’ to shoot us all to hell-and-gone, I felt nervous myself. Honest I did.”