Very deliberately the boatman studied the engine, poking the lantern about and, when it failed to illuminate dark recesses, lighting the stump of candle. Then he spun the fly-wheel.
There was no answer. Again and again he spun it, but the engine remained inert. After a while he resumed his placid and apparently purposeless examination of the gasoline monster.
"Well, what is the matter now?" demanded a cutting voice.
"Engine stopped," said the boatman, putting down the lantern and beginning to refill his pipe.
"Thank you for the information," said Miss Chalmers icily. "Why has it stopped?"
There was something about the "ma’am," drawled out at the end, that peculiarly exasperated her; it seemed to lack the servility that was familiar to her from the lips of servants.
Miss Chalmers’s temper was rising rapidly. She looked at her watch, then at the dark shores and islands.
"How dared you bring me out here if you didn’t—Oh, it’s—it’s—perfectly outrageous! It’s—"
She left the sentence unfinished, seized the lantern, brushed her way past the boatman without so much as a scornful glance, and dropped to her knees in the bottom of the cock-pit.
The floor was oily and dirty, but Miss Chalmers paid no attention to that. She devoted the next five minutes wholly to an examination of the engine. The boatman watched and smoked.
Item by item, she inventoried the one-cylinder pest. She peered into the oil-cups; she smeared her gloves on the cam that operated the timing-lever; she fussed with the tickler on the carbureter; she did a score of other things, while her audience watched in silence. After she got through with the engine she turned her attention to the batteries, tightening a wire connection here and there.
"Now, where’s your socket-wrench?" she demanded.
"Socket-wrench?" repeated the boatman. "That’s a new one on me. I don’t remember—"
"Haven’t you ever taken out the spark-plug?"
"Oh, you mean that funny thing that screws it out. Sure! I’ve got one somewhere."
He fumbled under a seat and drew out a box that contained a disorderly array of tools. Miss Chalmers dived a daintily gloved hand into it and brought forth what she sought.
He did not finish the sentence, because she already had the spark-plug in her hand and was holding the points close to the light.