"I knew it," said Mr. Wardrop; "and they won't give us good food, either. We shall have bananas morning, noon, and night, an' a man can't work on fruit. We know that."
Then the skipper cursed Mr. Wardrop for importing frivolous side–issues into the conversation; and the crew cursed one another, and the Haliotis, the voyage, and all that they knew or could bring to mind. They sat down in silence on the empty decks, and their eyes burned in their heads. The green harbour water chuckled at them overside. They looked at the palm–fringed hills inland, at the white houses above the harbour road, at the single tier of native craft by the quay, at the stolid soldiery sitting round the two cannon, and, last of all, at the blue bar of the horizon. Mr. Wardrop was buried in thought, and scratched imaginary lines with his untrimmed finger–nails on the planking.
"I make no promise," he said, at last, "for I can't say what may or may not have happened to them. But here's the ship, and here's us."
There was a little scornful laughter at this, and Mr. Wardrop knitted his brows. He recalled that in the days when he wore trousers he had been Chief Engineer of the Haliotis.
"Harland, Mackesy, Noble, Hay, Naughton, Fink, O'Hara, Trumbull."
"Here, sir!" The instinct of obedience waked to answer the roll–call of the engine–room.
"Below!"
They rose and went.
"Captain, I'll trouble you for the rest of the men as I want them. We'll get my stores out, and clear away the shores we don't need, and then we'll patch her up. My men will remember that they're in the Haliotis,—under me."
He went into the engine–room, and the others stared. They were used to the accidents of the sea, but this was beyond their experience. None who had seen the engine–room believed that anything short of new engines from end to end could stir the Haliotis from her moorings.
The engine–room stores were unearthed, and Mr. Wardrop's face, red with the filth of the bilges and the exertion of travelling on his stomach, lit with joy. The spare gear of the Haliotis had been unusually complete, and two–and–twenty men, armed with screw–jacks, differential blocks, tackle, vices, and a forge or so, can look Kismet between the eyes without winking. The crew were ordered to replace the holding–down and shaft–bearing bolts, and return the collars of the thrust–block. When they had finished, Mr. Wardrop delivered a lecture on repairing compound engines without the aid of the shops, and the men sat about on the cold machinery. The cross–head jammed in the guides leered at them drunkenly, but offered no help. They ran their fingers hopelessly into the cracks of the starboard supporting–column, and picked at the ends of the ropes round the shores, while Mr. Wardrop's voice rose and fell echoing, till the quick tropic night closed down over the engine–room skylight.
Next morning the work of reconstruction began. It has been explained that the foot of the connecting–rod was forced against the foot of the starboard supporting–column, which it had cracked through and driven outward towards the ship's skin. To all appearance the job was more than hopeless, for rod and column seemed to have been welded into one. But herein Providence smiled on them for one moment to hearten them through the weary weeks ahead. The second engineer—more reckless than resourceful—struck at random with a cold chisel into the cast–iron of the column, and a greasy, grey flake of metal flew from under the imprisoned foot of the connecting–rod, while the rod itself fell away slowly, and brought up with a thunderous clang somewhere in the dark of the crank–pit. The guides–plates above were still jammed fast in the guides, but the first blow had been struck. They spent the rest of the day grooming the donkey–engine, which stood immediately forward of the engine–room hatch. Its tarpaulin, of course, had been stolen, and eight warm months had not improved the working parts. Further, the last dying hiccup of the Haliotis seemed—or it might have been the Malay from the boat–house—to have lifted the thing bodily on its bolts, and set it down inaccurately as regarded its steam connections.
"If we only had one single cargo–derrick!" Mr. Wardrop sighed. "We can take the cylinder–cover off by hand, if we sweat; but to get the rod out o' the piston's not possible unless we use steam. Well, there'll be steam the morn, if there's nothing else. She'll fizzle!"
Next morning men from the shore saw the Haliotis through a cloud, for it was as though the deck smoked. Her crew were chasing steam through the shaken and leaky pipes to its work in the forward donkey–engine; and where oakum failed to plug a crack, they stripped off their loin–cloths for lapping, and swore, half–boiled and mother–naked. The donkey–engine worked—at a price—the price of constant attention and furious stoking—worked long enough to allow a wire–rope (it was made up of a funnel and a foremast–stay) to be led into the engine–room and made fast on the cylinder–cover of the forward engine. That rose easily enough, and was hauled through the skylight and on to the deck, many hands assisting the doubtful steam. Then came the tug of war, for it was necessary to get to the piston and the jammed piston–rod. They removed two of the piston junk–ring studs, screwed in two strong iron eye–bolts by way of handles, doubled the wire–rope, and set half a dozen men to smite with an extemporised battering–ram at the end of the piston–rod, where it peered through the piston, while the donkey–engine hauled upwards on the piston itself. After four hours of this furious work, the piston–rod suddenly slipped, and the piston rose with a jerk, knocking one or two men over into the engine–room. But when Mr. Wardrop declared that the piston had not split, they cheered, and thought nothing of their wounds; and the donkey–engine was hastily stopped; its boiler was nothing to tamper with.
And day by day their supplies reached them by boat. The skipper humbled himself once more before the Governor, and as a concession had leave to get drinking–water from the Malay boat–builder on the quay. It was not good drinking–water, but the Malay was anxious to supply anything in his power, if he were paid for it.
Now when the jaws of the forward engine stood, as it were, stripped and empty, they began to wedge up the shores of the cylinder itself. That work alone filled the better part of three days—warm and sticky days, when the hands slipped and sweat ran into the eyes. When the last wedge was hammered home there was no longer an ounce of weight on the supporting–columns; and Mr. Wardrop rummaged the ship for boiler–plate three–quarters of an inch thick, where he could find it. There was not much available, but what there was was more than beaten gold to him. In one desperate forenoon the entire crew, naked and lean, haled back, more or less into place, the starboard supporting–column, which, as you remember, was cracked clean through. Mr. Wardrop found them asleep where they had finished the work, and gave them a day's rest, smiling upon them as a father while he drew chalk–marks about the cracks. They woke to new and more trying labour; for over each one of those cracks a plate of three–quarter–inch boiler–iron was to be worked hot, the rivet–holes being drilled by hand. All that time they were fed on fruits, chiefly bananas, with some sago.
Those were the days when men swooned over the ratchet–drill and the hand–forge, and where they fell they had leave to lie unless their bodies were in the way of their fellows' feet. And so, patch upon patch, and a patch over all, the starboard supporting–column was clouted; but when they thought all was secure, Mr. Wardrop decreed that the noble patchwork would never support working engines; at the best, it could only hold the guide–bars approximately true, he deadweight of the cylinders must be borne by vertical struts; and, therefore, a gang would repair to the bows, and take out, with files, the big bow–anchor davits, each of which was some three inches in diameter. They threw hot coals at Wardrop, and threatened to kill him, those who did not weep (they were ready to weep on the least provocation); but he hit them with iron bars heated at the end, and they limped forward, and the davits came with them when they returned. They slept sixteen hours on the strength of it, and in three days two struts were in place, bolted from the foot of the starboard supporting–column to the under side of the cylinder. There remained now the port, or condenser–column, which, though not so badly cracked as its fellow, had also been strengthened in four places with boiler–plate patches, but needed struts. They took away the main stanchions of the bridge for that work, and, crazy with toil, did not see till all was in place that the rounded bars of iron must be flattened from top to bottom to allow the air–pump levers to clear them. It was Wardrop's oversight, and he wept bitterly before the men as he gave the order to unbolt the struts and flatten them with hammer and the flame. Now the broken engine was underpinned firmly, and they took away the wooden shores from under the cylinders, and gave them to the robbed bridge, thanking God for even half a day's work on gentle, kindly wood instead of the iron that had entered into their souls. Eight months in the back–country among the leeches, at a temperature of 84 degrees moist, is very bad for the nerves.