“Smart thinking!” Jerry whispered. “There’s very little danger that they can chase us with the freighter itself. In the first place, by the time they could turn it around, we’d be out of sight. And if they don’t catch up with us out here, they won’t dare come too near the harbor. The water there isn’t deep enough for a ship this size and it would be too risky for them. But I don’t know too much about engines. How are you going to disable this one?”
“I know a few ways,” Sandy answered, “and I’m going to use them all! If I just put one thing out of order, they might fix it right away. But, with the mess I’m going to make of that engine, it’ll take them a half hour or better to get it going. And by then, I hope, we’ll have sailed out of sight!”
Working with the greatest of care, the boys unlaced the canvas cover on the outboard side of the lifeboat. Standing on the rail of the ship, Sandy swung up and slid in beneath the cover, into a pitch-blackness that made the night outside seem bright in comparison.
As Jerry joined Sandy, his added weight made the lifeboat lurch to one side, and brought a creak from the davits in which the boat was hung. To the boys under the canvas, it sounded as loud as a scream! Motionless in the dark, they waited for the thud of running feet, the tearing back of the boat cover, the glare of flashlights—but none came. The only answer to the noise was a thin, tuneless whistle from the deck above them. It was Turk’s fellow sailor, keeping watch for his spying friend, and he was as afraid of passing noises as the boys were!
Not daring to move, Sandy and Jerry waited for what seemed hours until the slight swaying of the lifeboat stopped. As cautiously as they could, so as not to start it moving again, they changed their positions in such a way as to balance the boat better. At last they were stationed one on each side of what Sandy could only hope was the engine compartment.
“How can you work in the dark?” Jerry whispered. “How will you know what’s what in there?”
“It shouldn’t be too hard,” Sandy replied. “Almost all engines have a lot in common. If I can just get my hands on the engine, I think I’ll know what to do.”
Working only by touch, it was not easy to find out how the lid to the engine compartment was removed. Slowly moving his hands around the surfaces of the box, Sandy found two hook-eyes, which he carefully unfastened. On the opposite side of the box, he found two more, which he also undid.
“We’re in luck,” he whispered to Jerry. “If this had been a hinged top, I don’t think we could have opened it. There isn’t enough headroom below this canvas to raise a boxtop this size.”
With the greatest of care, making only the smallest of scraping noises, they removed the heavy lid and placed it across two of the lifeboat’s seats.