“Man,” said Mr. Hartley, “you're a genius.” He peered through the spray down to leeward, where the pilot's boat danced a death dance alongside, heel and toe to the Puncher's statelier swing. “Yes; there are three men bailing, and you're a genius. But no! The answer's no! The engines'll keep on turning, maybe and perhaps, until we make the shelter o' yon reef. There's no knowing what a cherry-red bearing will do. I can give ye maybe fifteen knots; maybe a leetle more for just five minutes, for steerage way and luck, and after that—”
Even crouched as he was against the canvas guard he contrived to shrug his shoulders.
“But if we go in there are you sure you can contrive to patch her up? It looks like a rotten passage, and not much of a berth beyond it.”
“I could cool her down.”
“Oh, if that's all you want, I can anchor outside in thirty fathoms.”
Curley Crothers heard that and his whole frame stiffened; there seemed a chance yet that the Navy might not be disgraced. But it faded on the instant.
“Man, we've got to go inside and we've got to hurry! Better in there than at the bottom of the Gulf! Put her where she'll hold still for a day, or maybe two days—”
“Say a month!” suggested the commander caustically.
“Say three days for the sake of argument. Then I can put her to rights. I daren't take down a thing while she's rolling twenty-five and more, and I've got to take things down! Why, man, the engine-room is all pollution from gratings to bilge; if I loosened one more bolt than is loose a'ready her whole insides 'ud take charge and dance quadrilles until we drowned!”
“You won't try to make Bombay?”