In the saloon I found Morris and the second engineer, who had just turned out of his bunk preparatory to going on his watch in the engine room at 1 A. M. With one shoe on and the other in his hand he sat spell-bound as he listened to the narration of one of Morris’s hair-raising Philippine experiences. I had intended turning in at once, but lighted a cigar instead for a chat with the machinist for the few minutes he had to spare.
Our conversation naturally drifted to the subject which we both had in common, and before we knew it we were deep in a discussion as to the respective merits of turbine and reciprocating engines. The engineer was still nursing his unshod foot, forgetful of all but the question we were arguing.
“For my part,” he was saying, “give me for all around service triple expansion—I don’t say but what for high speed like torpedo boats and such, turbines may not be good, but they do say the blades sheer in bucketsful at high pressure driving. Now you take a four-cylinder triple turning her darndest—”
He paused suddenly and looked sharply at me. We had both felt a barely perceptible tremor run through the ship. A tumult of anger swept through my veins.
“She touched bottom,” I explained, furious at even the prospect of a further delay in getting my story to the cable.
“That’s funny,” mused the engineer, slipping on the belated boot in a hurry. “It surely felt like sliding over a mud bank. We must be ten miles from shore at least. But it can’t be, for the old man hasn’t even slowed her down. We must have dreamed it.”
“Nothing of the sort,” I replied, having been there many times before. “We are too near the shore, and the skipper’s either drunk or asleep. I am going on deck,” and I got up and put on my coat and started for the stairs.
I had barely put my foot on the bottom step when we felt the sudden check to our speed and that subtle velvety sensation of a ship sliding through mud. I turned and looked at the engineer, who was at my heels.
“The fool,” he muttered, and then a lot of Greek expletives which sounded good to me. “He’s piled her up on the mud bank.”
And even as he spoke there came the frantic clanging of the telegraph in the engine room, and almost instantly the dying pulse of the engines as the chief engineer shut off the steam. The pistons had been slipping merrily up and down in their guides driving the shaft at its maximum, and for a few strokes their impetus carried them, but the life was gone, and after a few half-hearted revolutions they came to a sullen standstill, the high pressure engine just at the end of its reach and the low caught in the middle of its stroke. The absolute silence was broken only by the lap of the waves breaking on our steel sides. In a moment I was on the bridge with Morris at my heels. A tumult of Greek voices in the wheel-house told of the endeavors to adjust the responsibility of the blunder. It is always so with the Greeks. In an emergency they all begin to quarrel as to who is to blame. So it was at this juncture, and until I had Stomati translating some strong Anglo-Saxon language, the idea of how we were going to get afloat again did not seem to have crossed any one’s mind. They all united in condemning Spero as the simplest way out of the matter, and let it go at that.