A screw head had worked loose and allowed a cogwheel to shift. This is what had caused the whole trouble. With a screwdriver and a new screw Jack soon had the mechanism running as well as ever.
“And so that’s all that was the matter with it,” cried the man of the tower. “Why, I could have fixed that myself, and I don’t know a monkey-wrench from a handsaw. I guess, though, it’s like Columbus’s egg trick—easy when you know how, and blamed hard when you don’t.”
“Perhaps that’s it,” said Jack, with an enigmatic smile. He knew, but didn’t say so, that only long experience and a deft hand for mechanics had enabled him to locate the trouble at all, it was such a very obscure one.
“At any rate, I’m ever so grateful to you lads,” the man said fervently. “How to thank you, though, I don’t just know.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Jack. “The best way you could repay for any help we have been fortunate enough to give you, would be to tell us some way to find our friends.”
The man puckered his brow in thought. The boys had told him their story, and he was really anxious to help them. What with Jack’s mechanical skill and his clever handling of the boat, the assistant keeper’s admiration for the lad was tremendous.
“Tell you what,”, began the keeper suddenly, but he broke off abruptly again.
“No, that wouldn’t do, either,” he concluded, shaking his head.
“What wouldn’t do?” asked Jack.
“We’ll try anything, however impossible it seems,” struck in Tom.