"By the way, your passage-money includes dinner; the line sets out to do you tremendously well. There's only room for half the passengers in the dining-saloon at one time; but dinner is on for three hours, and you can dine early or late. You will only get a cup of tea and a piece of toast in the morning, and have breakfast on shore."
He explained he would have to leave me.
"The Skipper told me you are an old flying-boat man," he said, "and, if he was not on board, to introduce you to the Chief Engineer."
I followed the Purser forward through the smoking-room, and, by means of a side door, to the engine-room. I was introduced to the Chief. As was to be expected, he was a Scotchman—Angus Munroe.
To him I opened my heart. I explained I was a poor Rip Van Winkle who had not seen a flying-boat or chewed on a figure for ten years, that I was bursting with curiosity, and in the sacred name of Pity to tell me the horse-power, weight, dimensions, and speed of his wonderful boat.
His long face cracked in a smile.
"Ay," he said. "The Skipper told me you learned him to fly in a bit boat weighing six tons."
He waved his hand at three long fat tubes running athwart ship overhead, from side to side of the boat, on a level with the lower wings.
"Turbines," he explained. "Thirty thousand horse. Steam. But vara likely ten years ago you peddled aboot with internal combustion fakements—chattering, clattering, and onreliable. But yon's power for you—silent, reliable, sweet, and done oop in a penny packet. Vara likely in your heathen islands ye never heard tell of Janes Fluid. We make steam wi' it instead of water. I could do wi' holding the patent. Condensing? That was the deeficulty. Great volumes of steam coming off at great velocity. But Janes Fluid and Toogoods condenser do the beesiness."