"Aye, an w'ot come of th' _Vulcan's_ crew?"

"Could a sea serpent put out a sea anchor?" retorted Leonard.

The men stared doggedly at their chief. "We don't know, sor."

"You do know that it is impossible!"

"If there ain't no such thing, sor, 'ow do we know w'ot it can do?"

questioned Gaskin.

"Then do you want to go back and stay on the dock and starve?" cried Madden at the end of his patience.

There was a silence at the anger in his tone, then Gaskin began very placatingly, "Hi'm not wishin' to chafe ye, sor, but th' dock is so big th' lads 'ave decided the sorpint is afraid o' th' dock."

At Leonard's impatient gesture he added hastily, "Not that Hi believe in such things, sor, but Hi carn't 'elp but notice that hever'body on th'

dock is alive, an' hever'body on th' other two wessels is dead an' gone, sor."

Madden turned sharply on his heel. "Anybody who knows anything about marine engines, follow me," he snapped. "We must study out a way to start the _Vulcan's_ machinery. We're going!"

As he moved down to the doorway amidship that led below, he heard Galton mumble: "Yes, _we'll_ be going, Hi think, down some sea sorpint's scaly throat, but th' tug an' th' dock'll stay 'ere."

If a view of the _Minnie B's_ auxiliary engines had put hopeful notions in Madden's head of puzzling out their control by mere inspection, a single glance at the huge machinery of the _Vulcan_ filled him with despair.

The tug's hull was practically filled with a maze of machinery. Her engines arose in a tower of bracings, wheels, gearing, pistons, steam pipes, steam valves, with a multitude of the eccentrics and trip gearings used on quadruple expansion engines.

Although he had seen hundreds of steam engines, never before had Madden realized their complication until he faced the problem of running this difficult fabric. His proposed task made him realize that the engineer's apprentice, who serves four years amid oil and iron black, learning all the details of these mechanical monsters, is probably just as well educated, just as capable of exact and sustained thought, as the lad who spends four years in college construing dead tongues.

Madden could construe dead tongues, or at least could when he left college a few months back, but now his life, the life of his crew, the salving of the dock, and the winning of a possible fortune, depended upon his answering the riddle of this Twentieth Century Sphinx. It was like attempting to understand all mathematics, from addition to celestial mechanics, at a glance.

Nevertheless, Madden's training as a civil engineer gave him a certain aptitude for his formidable undertaking and he set about it with rat-like patience.

He picked out the main steam pipe, larger than his body, covered with painted white canvas, and followed this till he discovered the throttle, a steel wheel with hand grips with which he could choke the breath out of the monster engines. Beside this were control levers. On the steam chest lay a half-smoked cigarette, as if the engineer had been called suddenly away from his post.

Madden turned the throttle, pushed the levers back and forth, and listened to clicking sounds high up in the complexity of the engines. He knew that every lever threw long systems of vents and valves in and out of play. A wrong combination would easily wreck all this powerful machinery. He was tackling a delicate job--like juggling a car-load of dynamite.

An oil can sat under the throttle. The amateur engineer picked up this and a handful of greasy tow. Engines require constant oiling. Madden had never watched an engineer ten minutes but that he went about poking a long crooked-necked oil can into all sorts of hidden inaccessible places.

Madden thought if he tried to oil the engine, he might learn something about it. He glanced around for the usual myriad little shining brass oil cups stuck, one on each bearing. To his surprise, he saw none. The machinery of the _Vulcan_ was lubricated by a circulatory compression system, which used the same oil over and over. Madden did not know this, so it threw him off the track at his first step.

No one had followed the boy into the engine room, so now he was about to go on deck and commandeer a squad, when, to his surprise, Galton appeared at the top of the circular stairs, whistling a rather cheerful tune. He leaned over the rail and called down heartily:

"Do you want me, Mr. Madden?"

"Yes, come along. I wish you knew something about machinery."

Galton laughed buoyantly. "I'm not such a chump at hit, sor," he recommended.

"You know something about it?" inquired Madden in surprise.

"A bit, a bit, Mr. Madden. My brother Charley is chief engineer on the _Rajah_ in the P & O, sor."

"Ever work under him?" asked the American hopefully.

"Two years, only two years, sor. Never did finish my term an' get my papers. Often's the time 'e's begged me to do it, Mr. Madden. 'E'd say, ''Enry, me boy, w'y don't ye finish your term and git a screw o' sixteen pun' per, but I was allus a----"

"That's all right!" cried Leonard delightedly. "I don't care whether you're a full-fledged engineer or not. You're hired for this job.

Understand? You'll get full wages, and then some. I'll----"

"Oh! I can 'andle a little hengine like this, sor. That's th'

inspirator, sor," he pointed. "That's th' steam chist. In th' other end is th' condensing chamber. That little hegg-shaped thing is----"

"That's all right; I'm no examining board. Just so you can run it and keep it running. Now I'll get a gang at the furnace, if the boys have got over their sea-serpent scare by this time."

"They're jolly well over that, sor. Me and Mulcher 'ave decided as 'ow we're goin' to kill that sea sorpint, if it comes a-bitin' into our tug, sor."

Madden looked at his willing helper curiously. "Kill it--how are you going to kill it?"

"Dead, sor, yes, kill it dead, sor." Galton nodded solemnly, "My brother Charley, cap'n o' th' _Cambria_, sir, in th' 'Amburg-American Line, 'e learned me to kill sea sorpints, w'en I was jest a l-little bit of a--a piker, sor. An' I n-never forgot 'ow 'e told me to do it. You climb up th' mainmast, sor, w'ere you can git at their 'eads, cross your fingers for luck, an' blow tobacco smoke in their eyes. They 'ate tobacco smoke an----"

Leonard stared at the fellow, with a sinking heart. He was drunk. As to whether he knew anything about marine engines or not, there was no way to find out.

The effect of the long strain of heat, hunger and anxiety now told on Madden in a wave of unreasonable exasperation.

"You boozy fool!" snapped the officer, "you haven't sense enough to run a go-cart. Go down and start a fire in the furnace--can you do that?"

"Shertainly," nodded Galton gravely, "Mr. Madden, I can do anything. Go bring me th' furnace, and I'll put a fire in it _that_ quick. I'll start it now."

Here he stooped unsteadily, picked up a piece of oily tow, and before Madden knew what he was about, drew out a match and set fire to the greasy mass.

Leonard made a jump, planted a cracking blow between Galton's eyes. The fellow went down like a tenpin and lay still. The American stamped out the blazing tow before the fire spread on the oily floor.

Just then he heard a yelling from the upper deck. Hardly knowing what to expect, he dived for the circular stairway and rushed up three steps at a jump.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SEA SERPENT

When a new crew is shipped on an old vessel, the mate's first duty is to search the sailors' dunnage for whiskey; when an old crew is shipped on a new vessel, that officer would do well to search the vessel for rum.

Madden had neglected this. While the American was in the engine room, the cockneys in the cook's galley had found intoxicants, had poured raw whiskey into their empty stomachs and the result was the quickest and most complete intoxication. When Madden regained the deck he found his crew singing, laughing, fighting, quarreling in an absurd medley.

Deschaillon roared out a French song. Two cockneys quarreled bitterly over what words he was saying. Mike Hogan jigged to the Frenchman's tune, but shouted as he danced that he was spoiling for a fight. The smell of spirits reeked over the tug as if someone had sprinkled her deck with liquor.

Madden looked with anxious eyes for Caradoc, but did not see him. Smith was probably stuck away in some hole, senseless with poison, his effort at sobriety frustrated, his moral courage shattered, his weeks of painful reform smashed.