“This is my daughter! Look at her!”
Now, as Richter discovered, Hylda, twenty-seven years of age, somewhat prim and musical, had given her promise to an electrician whom the engineer believed was not fit to dust her shoes. Richter, used to breaking and thrashing coolie oilers, ordered Gathright from the house and locked up his daughter.
She cried for seven days. Gathright was seen in town. Richter’s rage gave way to an engineer’s calculation.
“What for I study in University and college? Why do I hold certificates? I fix Gathright!”
No oil was smoother than Richter’s well-laid plan; he sent Hylda away and met Gathright.
“All right about my daughter,” he told the electrician. “You go one voyage with me—we’ll see Henningay—I’ll fix you up so that you can draw one hundred and fifty dollars in wage, with a rating as electrician aboard the Seriphus.”
Gathright went with Richter to San Francisco. They recrossed the Bay, without seeing Henningay, Jr., and, at dusk, climbed over the shoring timbers and went aboard the Seriphus. Richter’s voice awoke echoes in the deserted ship and dry-dock:
“Come, I show you my dynamo and motors. We go to the boiler-room first, where the pumps are.”
The boiler-room, forward the engine-room of the tanker, was a place of many snakelike pipes, valves, sea-plates and oily seepage from the feedtanks. The Seriphus was a converted oil-burner, having been built before crude petroleum was used for steaming purposes. Three double-end Scotch boilers made the steam that drove the tanker’s triple-expansion engine.
Richter knew the way down to the boiler-room, blindfolded. He struck matches, however, to guide Gathright, and remarked that the newer ships of Henningay’s fleet had a storage-battery reserve for lighting purposes when the dynamo ceased running.