Ding-dong’s sudden reappearance chased these thoughts swiftly out of his mind.
“Where on earth have you been?” he demanded, staring open-mouthed at Ding-dong as if he had been a ghost.
“Wer-wer-what’s happened to the engines?” sputtered Ding-dong anxiously.
“I came down here the instant they stopped,” he said. “I caught our black-whiskered friend sneaking out of the engine room into the cabin with a monkey wrench in his hand. I’m sure he tampered with the engine.”
“Phew! That’s rer-er-right in line with what I went on deck to tell Nat about.”
“Just this. Happening to pe-pe-peek into the c-c-c-cabin a while back, I sus-sus-saw Wer-Wer-Whiskers kneeling in front of one of Jer-Jer-Jenkins’ trunks. He couldn’t get it open, and then I saw him tip-toe over to Jer-Jenkins and start to go through his pockets. I ber-ber-beat it up on deck to tell Nat.”
“Then you must have been going up the port companionway while I was coming down the starboard, and that’s how we missed running into each other.”
“To ger-ger-get the engines going and not mind anything else just now.”
“That’s right; we’re in a bad fix. I’ll stay down here and help you go over the motor. I can be of more use down here than up on deck.”
While the _Nomad_ took sickening swings and plunges, at times rolling over on her beam ends, the two lads went over the motor painstakingly. It was no light task in that turmoil and fury of wind and wave. Every once in a while, when the little craft took an exceptionally bad plunge, they exchanged glances which plainly said:
Once in a while Joe stole away to take a look at the doctor, whom he suspected of tampering with the motor. Each time he discovered no difference in the man’s strange repose. He might have been taking his ease on a Pullman drawing-room car instead of being on board a craft with which the elements were playing battledore and shuttlecock, for all the signs he showed of uneasiness. Joe did notice, though, that from time to time he cast glances from the magazine in which he appeared so much interested toward the lounge on which lay extended Mr. Jenkins’ senseless form.
It was on his return from one of these excursions that Joe was hailed by Ding-dong in an excited voice. Above the racket of the storm and the shouting of the voice of the wind there was not much danger of their being heard in the cabin.