Toby smiled sunnily and clapped his hat on his head. “Now we’ll start her,” he said. He went back to the forward locker in which the gasoline tank was located, thrust in a hand, withdrew it, closed the door again and returned to the engine. “Now try her,” he said.
Arnold did so and the engine woke promptly to life.
“What was it?” he demanded, surprise and admiration struggling for supremacy in his face.
Toby laughed. “I’ll tell you so it won’t be likely to happen again,” he replied. “You’ve got a globe cock on your gasoline supply pipe where it leaves the tank. Usually that shut-off is down here by the engine, and I don’t know why they put it there. But they did, and when you pulled your anchor out of your bow locker you managed to get your cable fouled with the cock and turned it almost square off. You weren’t getting any gasoline, Deering.”
“But I tried the carbureter twice and it flooded!”
“Of course it did, because there was gasoline in the pipe. The cock wasn’t quite closed, and enough kept running into the pipe to show in the carbureter, but not to explode in the cylinders. If I were you I’d take a piece of zinc and turn it over that cock; make a sort of hood of it, you know, so your line won’t get twisted in it.”
“I didn’t know there was any shut-off there,” grumbled Frank Lamson, “or I’d have looked at it.”
“There’s always one somewhere on the pipe,” replied Toby dryly. “Well, you’re all right now, I guess, eh?”
“Yes, thanks,” said Arnold gratefully. “And, by the way, Tucker——” He pulled a dollar bill from his coin purse and held it out with a smile. “I guess I’ll pay my debt.”
Toby gravely fished up a penny and the transfer was made.