The Salvage Board stood knee-deep in the water of the engine-room.

Hughie picked up a smoky inspection-lamp,--a teapot-like affair with a wick in the spout,--lit it, and peered about.

"Now look here," he said, "I don't quite know where this water came from, and it doesn't much matter, as no more is coming in at present. If the old man means to sink the ship he will have to come down here to do it. He has probably got some dodge arranged by which he can just turn a wheel and open a valve and send her to the bottom. Isn't that the idea, Goble? (I'll explain to you afterwards, Allerton.) My impression is that he'll pop down and turn the valve on just before he leaves. In that case one of us must stand by and turn it off again. You two go through into the stokehold. He's not likely to come in there. If he does, you must use your own discretion. I'll wait here, on the far side of the cylinders, up against the condenser. He's not likely to see me, but I shall be able to watch him and see which valve-wheel he turns on."

The other two obeyed, and Hughie, scrambling across the bed-plates of the engines, ensconced himself behind a convenient cross-head, with his feet in a flooded crank-pit and his body squeezed back as far as possible into the shadow of the condenser.

He had not long to wait. Presently cautious feet were heard descending the iron ladder, and Mr. Angus, comparatively sober, stepped heavily into the flood on the floor.

His first proceeding was to wade to the stokehold end of the engine-room,--Hughie thought at first that he was going right through into the arms of Allerton and Goble, and wondered what they would do with him,--where he began to manipulate the great valve-wheel which kept the steam imprisoned in the boilers; and presently Hughie could hear the roar of the escape far above his head. This was a purely precautionary measure, and could do no harm to any one.

Then Mr. Angus splashed his way to the corner by the donkey-pump, where the machinery for controlling the bilge and water-ballast valves was situated, and began to twist over another wheel. Presently there was a gurgling bubbling sound in the bowels of the ship, followed by a slight hissing and whispering on the surface of the water on the engine-room floor. The valve was open.

Mr. Angus turned and lurched heavily through the rising flood to the iron ladder. Thirty seconds later a glistening figure crawled out of the crank-pit and vigorously turned the wheel in the opposite direction. The gurgling and hissing ceased. The valve was closed.

CHAPTER IX

_LITERA SCRIPTA MANET_

"Mr. Marrable, did ever ye see a drookit craw?"

"No."

"Well, see me!" announced Mr. Goble complacently.

He crawled out of the engine-room companionway and sat down on the deck.

Excessive spruceness had never been a foible of his, but now he was an unrecognisable ma.s.s of coal-dust, oil, and rust. He was dripping wet, for he had spent the last hour in an exhaustive examination of the Orinoco's waterlogged internal economy. The morning sun was warm, and he steamed comfortably as he detailed the result of his investigations to Hughie, who in some imperceptible but inevitable manner had taken command of the tiny ship's company.

Shorn of technicalities and irrelevant excursions into the regions of pawky philosophy, Mr. Goble's report came to this.

Mr. Angus had pumped out the after ballast-tank during the night, allowing the water, by means of a specially rigged return-pipe, to flow into the bilges of the ship instead of escaping overboard. By this device he had altered the Orinoco's centre of gravity in such a manner as to produce the afore-mentioned down-hill slant of her decks--a corroborative detail, as Pooh-Bah would have observed, which gave a little much-needed artistic verisimilitude to the Bimbo Brothers' bald and unconvincing narrative of disaster. Incidentally he had flooded the forehold and engine-room with sufficient water to give those members of the ship's company who were not in their employer's confidence the impression that she was sinking, and to furnish those who were with a _prima facie_ argument for deserting her.

But these thoughtful precautions, though sufficient to procure the abandonment of the Orinoco, were by no means sufficient to send her to the bottom, a consummation to be achieved at any cost; for to leave your ship lying about in mid-ocean, to be picked up by the first chance-comer, while you go hurrying home to extract a cheque from the insurance company, savours of slipshod business methods; and Mr. Noddy Kinahan was nothing if not thorough.

Now every steamer which plies under Lloyds' aegis is fitted, below the water-line, with a set of what are called bilge-valves. Through these it is possible to expel any water which may have found its way into the body of the vessel. As it is even more desirable to prevent the entrance of water into your ship than to a.s.sist its exit, these valves are of a strictly "non-return" variety, and no amount of pressure from the outside should ever prevail upon them to play the part of Facing-Both-Ways. The very life of the ship depends upon them; and the enterprising individual who tampers with their mechanism in such a manner as to convert what is meant to be an Emergency Exit into a sort of Early Door for the rolling deep, does so at the risk of coming into immediate and painful collision with the criminal laws of his country.

Mr. Angus, it appeared, had been employing some of his spare time during the voyage in reversing one of these bilge-valves, with such skill and _finesse_ that, as we have seen, one had only to give a turn to a worm-and-wheel gear in the engine-room to admit the Atlantic Ocean in large quant.i.ties.

"Oh, he has a heid on him, has Angus!" commented Mr. Goble with professional appreciation, "even when he's fou'. He made a rare job o't.

But how he managed to contrive that imitation o' a collision, merely through some jookery-packery wi' the reverse-gear and throttle, wi'oot tearin' the guts oot o' her, I div not ken. Man, it was a fair conjurin'

trick! By rights the link motion should be twisted intil a watch-chain and the cross-heids jammit in the guides. But they're no. It's jist Providence, I doot," he added rather apologetically, with the air of one who should have thought of this sooner.

Then he uprose from his seat on an inverted bucket.

"Before I gang ben, sir," he concluded, "tae change ma feet and ma breeks, I'll tak' the liberty tae inquire of you what you propose tae dae next. Maircy me! Yon's Walsh."

Two figures had appeared round the corner of the chart-house, their presence on the far side thereof having been advertised for some time by the clanking of the deck-pumps. (Mr. Angus's precaution of blowing off steam before leaving had put mechanical a.s.sistance in getting rid of the water out of the question for the time being.)

"Yes, it's me," said Walsh, who, it will be remembered, was the second engineer, to whom Hughie had recently been acting as deputy. "I should have come on duty at eight bells to relieve Angus, but I slept right through everything till Mr. Marrable found me in my bunk an hour or two ago. I expect they put something in my grog last night."

"It's quite a hobby of theirs," said Allerton drily. "Mr. Marrable, I have found something that may be useful to us."

He handed his superior officer a damp but undamaged little packet of papers.

"Where did you find them?" asked Hughie. "I thought I had gone through Kingdom's kit pretty thoroughly."

"They were sticking in the falls of the davits belonging to the boat Kingdom went off in," replied Allerton. "I saw him hurrying along the deck from his cabin just before his departure, carrying the log-book and some papers and instruments. I expect he dropped these as he went over the side."

"Sit down, everybody," said the commander, "we'll see this through. It may concern us all."

The packet contained two letters, together with some invoices and bills of lading referring chiefly to the Orinoco's cargo of astringent claret.

Hughie glanced through the letters. Then he re-read them with some deliberation. Then he whistled low and expressively. Then he sat up and sighed, gently and contentedly.

"Mr. Noddy Kinahan," he said, "is shortly going to wish, with all his benevolent and philanthropic little heart, that he had never been born.

And we are the people that are going to make him wish. Listen!"

He read the two letters aloud. They were brief, but explicit. One contained Kinahan's orders to Kingdom as to the disposal of the Orinoco.

The other was a sort of invoice, or consignment note, relating to the person of one Marrable, who had apparently been shipped on board the night before the ship sailed. Each of these doc.u.ments, it may be added, contained sufficient matter to ensure penal servitude for their author.

Hughie stopped reading, and there was a long and appreciative silence.

Then Allerton said:--

"What beats me is to understand how Kinahan could have been such a mug as to commit these schemes to paper, and how Kingdom should have been such a fool as to want to keep them. _I'd_ have let them go down in the Orinoco."

"I expect one explanation covers both cases," said Hughie. "Kingdom probably demanded his orders in black and white, as a guarantee that he would get his money when he had done his job. Otherwise he had no claim on Kinahan for a penny, beyond his ordinary wage as skipper. Kinahan probably agreed, stipulating that the letters should be handed back to him when they squared accounts. It was a risky thing to do, but when two thieves can't trust each other, and go dropping about doc.u.mentary evidence to that effect--well, that's where poor but deserving people like ourselves come in. No, I shouldn't think Kingdom _would_ want to leave these behind; and I opine that he's a pretty sick man by this time if he has missed them."

He folded the letters up, and put them away carefully.

"Now, gentlemen," he said briskly, "I propose that we go below and see if there is sufficient steam on the Orinoco to pump the rest of the water out of her and get the propeller revolving again. We'll have to damp down most of the fires, because we can't run too many firemen, but I think we ought to knock four or five knots out of her in ordinary weather. Luckily, seventy-five _per cent_ of the ship's company are competent engineers. After that we'll have some breakfast, and after that we'll make tracks for home. We'll work"--he smacked his lips cheerily, like an energetic pedagogue on the first morning of term--"in shifts of three. Two men will run the engine-room and stokehold, and the third will take the wheel. The fourth can sleep. That will give us each eighteen hours on and six hours off. I don't know where we are, and I have no means of finding out, as Captain Kingdom has walked off with the chart and most of the proper instruments. But we must be near land, or they would not have taken to the boats yet. If we keep steaming steadily east (with a little north in it), at about a hundred miles a day,--which I fancy is about our limit,--we should knock up against something sooner or later. And when we do, we'll get hold of the proper authorities, and I venture to think that with the help of these two letters and that doctored bilge-valve down below we shall be able to prepare a welcome for those three boat-loads of shipwrecked mariners, when they arrive, that will surprise them. Also, I fancy there will be pickings for you in the way of salvage. What a game!" Hughie stood up, and inhaled a great breath. This was real life! "Are you _on_, boys?" he cried suddenly. "Is the old Orinoco going to the bottom this journey?"

The crew rose at him and gave three cheers.

Later that afternoon, as the Orinoco pounded along at a strictly processional pace through the ruffling waters,--the gla.s.s was falling and a breeze getting up,--Deputy-Quartermaster Lionel Hinchcliffe Welford-Welford Allerton, late scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, sometime a.s.sistant Deck-Hand in the mercantile marine, descried from his post on the bridge a small moving object upon the starboard bow.

It was the Orinoco's whale-boat, which was proceeding under two lugsails on a course parallel with the steamer's.

Allerton, who in the excitement of salving the Orinoco had almost forgotten the existence of the gang of buccaneers who had scuttled her, excitedly rang the telegraph bell and summoned the rest of the ship's company to his side.

The emotions, however, aroused in the Orinoco by the sight of the whale-boat were mild in comparison with those excited in the undutiful whale-boat by the spectacle of her resuscitated parent. Mr. Angus, on beholding the steamer, kept discreetly silent. He had given himself away by seeing things which were not there once or twice in his life before.

But Captain Kingdom turned a delicate apple-green.