I had his attention now, and so I threw in the local touch to round it off with.
“That’s what time means to the outside world, but I have not told you how the office is crying for it. You see, now we have been out nearly a week, and my chief at home is getting anxious. I can see the foreign editor sitting at his desk to-morrow. For three days he has been expecting a cable from us. He locks up his forms about half past three, and after that our cable will be too late. He is expecting something good, and for two days now he has been holding space for us on the ‘front page’ up to the last moment. Every day that three o’clock comes and no news from us, he is sick with disgust. Now, chief, if we can get to Sulina by daybreak, we will give him his story, our story, and the story of what Odessa is suffering. That cable there will come in to his desk in four or five sheets about five minutes apart. When he sees the date and first sentence, he will know it is from us, and before the end has been received, the first pages will be in type, and in fifteen minutes after he has O. K.’d the last sentence, the great presses in the basement of the building will be roaring worse than one of your Black Sea hurricanes, and the neatly folded papers will be coming out at the rate of 60,000 an hour, and before we are through coaling in Sulina to-morrow afternoon, every newsboy in Chicago will be crying, ‘Extra, latest news from Russia; all about Odessa,’ and our story will be speeding east, west, south and north to a hundred different cities.”
I could see that my little Greek friend was getting enthusiastic. I took my dispatch lovingly in my hands and fingered it for a moment, and then “I have done all I can do, chief. It is up to you, now, whether we print this cable to-morrow or two days from now.”
He jumped up from the table and seized his hat.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, filled with the spirit of the game.
“I want speed, all that you can get down there below the grating.”
Without a word he turned and climbed the companion-way. I heard his quick step on deck above my head, and he was gone. A few minutes later I followed him and went down into the engine room. By the throttle stood my little friend, with one hand on the valve gear and his eye on the steam gauge. I put my hand on the eccentric arc of the high pressure engine and, with my watch in hand, counted the heartbeats of our 1000 horse power triples.
“One hundred and eight revolutions,” I said. “Not bad.”
The chief never took his eye from the gauge.
“You watch. We can do better than that.”