It was about nine-thirty that night as we were spinning merrily along over a fair sea, when the chief engineer came into my saloon. His face was like putty.
“What is wrong?” I asked with some apprehension, for he was the pluckiest of the lot.
For reply he threw on the table two large coils of fuses, the type one uses to set off a bomb or dynamite cartridges. I recognized them at once, for I had used the identical thing in a little dynamiting enterprise of my own a few years before.
“Where did these come from?” I asked sharply, looking at his white face.
“One of the stokers found them in the coal bunkers,” he replied quietly, and then added tensely, “and he nearly put them in the furnace with the coal.”
“Well, these are only fuses,” I said to reassure him. “They won’t do any thing but fizzle a bit.”
He smiled a bit sadly.
“Yes, I know that,” he replied, “but has it occurred to you that the man who carries fuses is apt to have the caps and the charge that they are meant to explode? And has it occurred to you that whoever put the fuse in the bunker probably put in the bomb as well? And has it occurred to you that at any moment they may go into the furnace by mistake with the coal? And has it occurred to you that when they do we will all go to Kingdom Come?”
This was certainly a new idea. No, it had not occurred to me at all. However, it did strike me as being a pertinent thought now that he spoke of it and I sat on the edge of my berth, with the shoe I had been removing still in my hand. Finally something else occurred to me as well and after a moment’s deliberation I replied, “You go right back to the stoke-hold, Chief, and explain the whole situation to the stokers. If they put a bomb in the furnace they will all be scalded to death beyond a shadow of a doubt. The rest of us have a chance to get away. Not a big one—but still it is a chance anyway. The stokers down there have not the most remote hope if they should make a blunder like that. Explain it carefully to them and then you go to bed. For it is my guess that under the circumstances they won’t put anything in the furnace to-night that does not bear a very decided resemblance to good black coal.”
The Chief thought a little and then went and did as I had suggested. In fifteen minutes he returned with the word that the day shift of stokers had turned out and, assisted by the balance of the crew not otherwise occupied, were making a careful personal inspection of every shovelful that went into the furnace. We both laughed a little and decided that we could safely turn in and sleep soundly.