Adventure Magazine Cover, November 10, 1924 — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Primitive Method The engines were rung to half speed; the watch on deck turned out, with the third officer, to investigate damage and cover the wrecked ventilators. It was eight bells be- fore the third returned to the bridge to report; and at this hour he found Captain Williams in a fine temper over the speaking tube. “Yes, it’s your son’s watch in the engine-room, ain’t it?” he was demanding. “Well, suppose you kindly go down an’ tell him I’d just as soon my ship kept her pro- pellers, if it’s all the same to him. The screws have raced their fool heads off ten times in the last ten minutes, an’ the engine- room don’t answer the tube. You claim to be responsible for him, so——”’ “Aye,” said Robert Graham, Senior; and in purple pajamas, list slippers, and a uni- form cap, left hisegyrating cabin for the slick bars of the engine-room’s upper plat- form. As he leaned over the rail, peering down into the thrashing maze of polished steel and red paint, the City of Mombasa pitched wildly; and the engines, port and starboard, roared on their bed-plates as the water-freed screws hammered the air. There was nobody at the throttle valve. Mr. Graham pushed his cap rather far back on his head, and went down the dizzy ladder rather faster than he was used. From the middle platform, in the stifling stratum of the cylinder heads, he perceived that the footplate was not only minus its attendant engineer, but entirely deserted. Not even a wiper was in sight. For the first time in the forty years since he had become salted to.engine-room tem- peratures, Mr. Graham found himself sweat- ing. He'also found himself endowed with a, power of voice he had never before pos- sessed. His first shout, uttered in direct competition with the booming trample of the crank-pits, brought a scared-looking Las- car from the direction of the stokehold door. ‘“‘Where’s officer-sahib?”’ The Lascar approached sidewise, fawning. ‘“‘Where’s the fourth engineer, ye black hunk o’ perdition?”’ The donkeyman spread his hands, mut- tering something about “go on deck;” and Graham, grabbing the throttle as the steel floor beneath him tilted forward and down for another plunge, sank his teeth into his lower lip. The engines, checked too late, shook the ship for an instant; and there was something in the feel of their vibration that 7 97 diverted the chief engineer’s eyes from the face of the Lascar, to the steam gage. The needle, which should have been touching one hundred and fifty pounds, was vibrating uncertainly around one hundred and ten. That would never do. The Lascars had been soldiering on the fires; and the first thing was not to find the fourth engineer, even if he was not overboard, but to get that pressure up again. The bridge might ring for full speed at any instant. ‘You savvy work this?’ demanded Gra- ham, Senior, slapping the throttle. The Lascar stepped forward, smiling; but there was a look in his eyes—— *fAtcha, sahib.”’ The ship pitched again, and the man eased the valve well enough. The chief engineer, his face strangely set, his pajamas flapping, rounded the forward guard of the starboard engines, and dived through the stokehold door. None of the furnaces was open. It was by the dim light of slush lamps hung on the sides of that steel vault, that Graham glared at his dusky underlings. There seemed .to. be a good many of them—more than ene watch; all sitting on their hams, with the whites of their eyes showing. ““Serang!”’ roared Graham. ‘What the ’s goin’ on here? Stoke, ye scuts, be- fore I The leading fireman, who had a white beard, got up; and so, without orders, did all the other stokers, including the deputy serang, the burra tindel, who ought to have been off watch. And though one man opened a furnace door, letting out a vivid orange glare to illumine that wild scene, the general movement was not, after the Lascar manner, away from the sakib; but—toward him. The serang gave an order; it was not obeyed. He had to repeat it in a snarl before his men turned away and flung them- selves at shovels and slice bars. And he had to speak yet again before the burra tindel left his side, and retired to the other end of the hold with the rest of the off-watch. “Tt was noo that puir Gra-hic-ham’s bluid must ha’ begun to run cold,”’ said McWhee, wagging his head from side to side in a manner most detrimental to the thread of the story. ‘In such fashion that instead o’ askin’ further concernin’ the steam pressure, which normally he would ha’ investigated wl a wheel wrench, he looked the serang i’ the eye an’— Comicbook (© 5}