He had no success there, but he began on the bunks lining the sides of the long, low, narrow cabin, at whose forward end was the wheel, with the engines just a little aft of amidships.
Still the storm, sudden and furious, mounted in ferocity. The vessel plunged and reared, rolled and twisted; her timbers creaked and her decks echoed to the roar and thunder of waves. Cliff and “Andy” stuck, one on either side of the motor, oiling, wiping, Andy watching the gasoline pressure glass, and the oil flow, Cliff jumping, clinging to the bunks, to bring a rag, or to steady Andy while he made an adjustment of the carbureter to compensate for the slight and occasional “miss” in one cylinder.
Forward, Bill, Nicky and Henry clung to the wheel, all swinging together at Henry’s order, or releasing a spoke or two to pay off for more way between the great, onrushing combers.
“Are we close in, yet?” gasped Nicky, half out of breath.
“No,” said Henry, between his teeth. “I’m going to swing her around if I can get steerage way in some minute when it’s quieter—we’d better run before it—but I das’sent try now—’cause why? She’d roll like a barrel and maybe dive under!”
“A drop of oil on that propeller shaft bearing,” shouted Andy to Cliff.
“Right!” cried Cliff, above the thud of water and the groan of the timbers and the thrashing pulsation of the propeller, racing as it was lifted from the surging water. “Ease her when she races, Andy,” but he knew that Andy did so before his young aide spoke.
“If we could get a chance to swing her around,” choked out Henry, a thoroughly sober and frightened man.
“Hold her as she is,” Nicky urged. “It’s too wild to turn here!”
“I’ve found it!” exulted Tom, rising from an old airtight waste can, bolted down aft of the engine; it had been filled with oily waste and old wiping rags, and he had found, at the bottom, the bottles Henry had concealed there. “Mr. Gray—don’t say a word. I’ll put them back until this storm blows by and then I’ll break them on the rocks when we get in to shore.”