“By four o'clock we'll be more than fifty miles off the course Schultz was holding her on,” the captain suggested. “In all likelihood the German admiral wirelessed his last position and the course he was steering, and von Staden gave Schultz his course accordingly.”
“Faith, we're not a moment too soon at that,” Mr. Reardon replied. “Schultz was lookin' for searchlights whin I tapped him. Be the Toe Nails av Moses ye're right, Michael. We'll be so far off that course be daylight they won't even see our shmoke. D'ye think that little handful av bones, Riggins, can manage the wheel until we've claned up the ingine-room gang? We can relieve him wit' wan av the Chinamen then.”
“Tell him he'll have to stick it out. And by the way, Terence, come to think of it, you had better run forward and remove the sidelights; then unscrew all of the incandescent lamps on deck until the contact is lost. You can screw them in again just before the watch is changed, so they won't suspect anything, and unscrew them again after we have the watch under lock and key. The fleet may be too far away to see our smoke by daylight, but they may be close enough to see our lights to-night! Tell Riggins to darken the pilot-house. The binnacle light is enough to keep him company.”
“Thrue for ye,” Terence replied, and hurried away to carry out Murphy's instructions.
At twelve o'clock the second assistant engineer, hurrying along the deck to relieve the first assistant on watch, found Mr. Reardon leaning over the rail meditatively puffing his old briar pipe. In answer to the former's query as to what kept the chief up so late, the latter replied that he was burning sulphur in his room to kill bedbugs.
“The good Lord forgive me the lie,” he prayed when a few minutes later he was called upon by the first assistant, hurrying off watch, to repeat the same tale.
The first assistant and his watch had a shower-bath and turned in. They were not interested in the workings of the deck department in the dark; they could not know that the vessel's course had been changed; they thought only of getting to sleep. Mr. Reardon waited until one-thirty A. M. to provide against possible sleepless ones, and then crept aft on velvet feet. The _Narcissus_ had very commodious quarters in her stern, where her coolie crew had been housed in the days when she ran in the China trade; and when the Blue Star Navigation Company took her over these quarters had been fitted up to accommodate the engine room crew. In the same manner, therefore, that he had imprisoned the men of the deck department in the forecastle, Mr. Reardon now proceeded to imprison the men of the engine department in the sterncastle. This delicate mission accomplished, he went up top-side and measured the diameter of the ventilators, in order to make certain that the thinnest of his German canaries could not fly the cage via that difficult route. Having satisfied himself that he had no need to worry on this score, he made his way forward again.
