"'Turn her up to her hottest gait, an' mind that I'll shoot the first man that leaves his post.'
"W'ich the same I would 'a' done it; 'cos w'y, they might as well 'a' ben shot as drownded.
"'Now, ye gallopin' haythen,' sez I to they, sez I, 'shovel coal fur yer lives. Hop, now, hop! Fill the furnaces full; put a ton o' lead on the safety-valve; turn on the forced draught, an' turn up the screws till they make the water hot astarn on us.'
"Waal, my sons, ye never in all yer born days seed any such hustlin'. It warn't fifteen minutes afore they had the furnaces red-hot, an' the screws was agoin' round at the rate o' a hundred an' thirty-seven turns a minute. It took the wessel a little while to git agoin', but in ten minutes she were a-vibratin' like a fiddle-string, so that she jes actooally hummed like one. An' go! Waal, ye 'ain't never seed nothin' like it in water. W'y, the waves goin' past her looked like the tracks o' one o' Farmer Hulick's harrows. Then my scheme beginned fur to work. I told ye that the Hop-lo always went down by the starn when she got to goin' fast, didn't I?"
"Yes," answered both boys.
"Waal, that were what I were countin' on partly—that an' her speed. The water inside o' her commenced fur to run out o' the hole wot I'd blowed in her starn. More come in the hole forrad an' flowed aft, so w'en she got to goin' at a twenty-five-knot gait, wot come in forrad couldn't stop; but jes ran right through her an' out the hole in the starn. The faster she went the faster the water went through her, but it couldn't stop inside, an' so it didn't get no deeper. Say, ye ort to seed the faces o' them Chinamen w'en they seed how my scheme were a-workin'! W'y, them fellers mos' killed theirselves a-heavin' coal on an' keepin' her goin' faster an' faster. The Cap'll he come down below, looked at the water a-runnin' through her, an' sez he to me, sez he,
"'Melican man biggee head.'
"'Werry good,' sez I to he, sez I; 'but wot I want o' you is silence, an' that o' the werry quietest sort.'
"'Allee lightee,' sez he.