"
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.
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