The Battery and the Boiler, Robert Michael Ballantyne [best book club books .TXT] 📗

boats could now be distinctly heard, the captain asked Sam if his batteries were well charged.

"Chock-full, sir," replied Sam with a broad grin; "there's not a bit of iron all round the ship that a man could lay hold of without receiving his due!"

"Good," said the captain, turning to the chief engineer; "are the hose attached and the boilers hot?"

"Bubblin' up fit to burst, sir. I've weighted the safety-valves to give it force?"

Without another word the captain stepped to the port gangway, and took off his hat to the advancing pirates. The pirate captain, not to be outdone in civility, took off his fez and bowed as the boat ranged alongside. The captain carefully held out one of the man-ropes to his enemy. He grasped it and seized the other.

An instantaneous yell of the most appalling nature issued from his mouth, and never before, since ship-building began, were a couple of man-ropes thrown off with greater violence! The pirate captain fell back into his boat, and the captain of the steamer stepped promptly back to avoid the storm of bullets that were let fly at his devoted head. At the starboard gangway the chief mate performed the same ceremony to another boat with a like result.

The pirates were amazed and enraged, but not cowed. With a wild cheer they made a simultaneous dash at the ship's sides all round. With a wilder yell they fell back into their boats,--shocked beyond expression! A few of them, however, chanced to lay hold of ropes or parts of the vessel that were not electrified. These gained the bulwarks.

"Shove in some more acid," said the chief electrician in suppressed excitement to Sam Shipton, who stood beside the batteries below.

"Stir up the fires, lads," cried the chief engineer to his men at the boilers beneath, as he stood holding a fire-nozzle ready.

Intensified yells all round told that chemical action had not been applied in vain, while the pirates who had gained the bulwarks were met with streams of boiling water in their faces. Heroes may and do face shot and shell coolly without flinching, but no hero ever faced boiling water coolly. The pirates turned simultaneously and received the streams in rear. Light cotton is but a poor defence in such circumstances. They sloped over the sides like eels, and sought refuge in the sea. Blazing with discomfiture and amazement, but not yet dismayed, these ferocious creatures tried the assault a second time. Their fury became greater, so did the numbers that gained a footing on the bulwarks, but not one reached the deck! The battery and the boiler played a part that day which it had never before entered into the brain of the wildest scientist to conceive. The hissing of the hot shower and the vigour of the cold shock were only equalled by the unearthly yelling of the foe, whose miraculous bounds and plunges formed a scene that is altogether indescribable.

The crew of the steamer stood spell-bound, unable to fight even if there had been occasion for so doing. The dark-skinned captain became Indian-red in the face from suppressed laughter.

Suddenly a tremor ran through the steamer, as if she too were unable to restrain her feelings. During the fight--if we may so call it--the engineers had been toiling might and main in the buried depths of their engine-room; the broken parts of the engine had been repaired or refitted, and a throb of life had returned to the machinery. In its first revolution the screw touched the stern of a pirate-boat and turned it upside down. Another boat at the bow was run over. The crews of both swam away like ducks, with their long knives between their teeth. The other boats hauled off.

"Now, captain," cried Robin Wright, who, during the whole time, had stood as if transfixed, with a cutlass in one hand, a pistol in the other, and his mouth, not to mention his eyes, wide open; "Now, captain, we shall get away without shedding a drop of blood!"

"Yes," replied the captain, "but not without inflicting punishment. Port your helm--hard a port!"

"Port it is, sir--hard over," replied the man at the wheel, and away went the steamer with a grand circular sweep which speedily brought her, bow-on, close to the pirate vessel.

"Steady--so!" said the captain, at the same time signalling "full steam" to the engine-room.

The space between the two vessels quickly decreased. The part of the pirate crew which had been left on board saw and understood. With a howl of consternation, every man sprang into the sea. Next moment their vessel was cut almost in two and sent fathoms down into the deep, whence it rose a limp and miserable remnant, flattened out upon the waves.

"Now," observed the captain, with a pleasant nod, "we'll leave them to get home the best way they can. A boat voyage in such fine weather in these latitudes will do them good."

Saying which, he resumed his course, and steamed away into the regions of the far East.


CHAPTER THIRTEEN.


TELLS OF A SUDDEN AND UNLOOKED-FOR EVENT.

How often it has been said, "Good for man that he does not know what lies before him." If he did we fear he would face his duty with very different feelings from those which usually animate him. Certain it is that if Robin Wright and Sam Shipton had known what was before them-- when they stood one breezy afternoon on the ship's deck, casting glances of admiration up at the mountain waves of the southern seas, or taking bird's-eye views of the valleys between them--their eyes would not have glistened with such flashes of delight, for the fair prospects they dreamed of were not destined to be realised.

What these prospects were was made plain by their conversation.

"Won't it be a splendid opportunity, Sam, to become acquainted with all the outs and ins of telegraphy, this laying of lines from island to island in the China Seas?"

"It will, indeed, Robin,--a sort of compound or alternating land-and-submarine line. At one time we shall be using palm-trees for posts and carrying wires through the habitations of parrots and monkeys, at another we shall be laying them down among the sharks and coral groves."

"By the way," said Robin, "is it true that monkeys may prove to be more troublesome to us in these regions than sparrows and crows are at home?"

"Of course it is, my boy. Have you never heard that on some of our Indian lines, baboons, vultures, and other heavy creatures have sometimes almost broken down the telegraphs by taking exercise and roosting on the wires?"

"Indeed, I hope it won't be so with us. At all events, sharks won't be much tempted, I should fancy, by submarine cables."

"There's no saying, Robin. They are not particular when hungry. By the way, I saw you talking with unusual earnestness this morning to Jim Slagg; what was the matter with him?"

"Poor fellow! you'd scarcely believe it, to look at him," replied Robin, "but the lad is actually home-sick."

"Home-sick! Why, how's that? If we were only a few days out from port, or even a week or two, I could understand it, but seeing that we are now drawing near to the China Seas, I should have thought--"

"Oh, that's easily explained," interrupted Robin. "This is his mother's birthday, it seems, a day that has always been kept with much rejoicing, he tells me, by his family, and it has brought back home and home-life with unusual force to him. With all his rough off-handedness, Slagg is a tender-hearted, affectionate fellow. Somehow he has taken it into his head that this voyage will be disastrous, and that he will never see his mother again. I had great difficulty in showing him the unreasonableness of such a belief."

"No doubt you had. It is unreasonable beliefs that people usually hold with greatest tenacity," replied Sam, with a touch of sarcasm. "But tell me, have he and Stumps never once quarrelled since leaving England?"

"Never."

"I'm amazed--they are so unlike in every way."

"You would not be surprised if you knew them as I do," returned Robin. "Ever since Slagg gave him that thrashing on board the Great Eastern in 1865, Stumps has been a changed man. It saved him from himself, and he has taken such a liking to Slagg that nothing will part them. It was that made me plead so hard for Stumps to be taken with us, because I felt sure Slagg would not go without him, and although we might easily have done without Stumps, we could not have got on so well without Slagg."

"I'm not so sure of that, my boy. Your opinion of him is too high, though I admit him to be a first-rate youth. Indeed, if it were not so, he should not be here.--Was that a shark's fin alongside?"

"Yes, I think so. Cook has been throwing scraps overboard, I suppose.-- See, there goes an empty meat-tin."

As he spoke the article named rose into the air, and fell with a splash in the water. At the same time Jim Slagg was seen to clamber on the bulwarks and look over.

"Come here--look alive, Stumps!" he shouted.

Stumps, whose proper name, it is but fair to state, was John Shanks, clambered clumsily to his friend's side just in time to see a shark open its horrid jaws and swallow the meat-tin.

"Well now, I never!" exclaimed Slagg. "He didn't even smell it to see if it was to his taste."

"P'r'aps he's swallowed so many before," suggested Stumps, "that he takes for granted it's all right."

"Well it's on'y flavour; and he has caught a Tartar this time," returned the other, "unless, maybe, tin acts like pie-crust does on human vitals."

The low deep voice of the captain was heard at this moment ordering a reef to be taken in the top-sails, and then it began to strike Robin and Sam that the breeze was freshening into something like a gale, and that there were some ominous-looking clouds rising on the windward horizon. Gazing at this cloud-bank for a few minutes, the captain turned and ordered the top-sails to be close-reefed, and most of the other sails either furled or reduced to their smallest size.

He was in good time, and the vessel was ready for the gale, when it rushed down on them hissing like a storm-fiend.

The good ship bent before the blast like a willow, but rose again, and, under the influence of able seamanship, went bravely on her course, spurning the billows from her swelling bows.

"What a thing it is to know that there is a good hand at the helm in times of danger!" remarked Sam as he and our hero stood under the shelter of the starboard bulwarks, holding on with both hands to the rigging, while the rushing waves tossed them on high or let them drop in the troughs of the seas; "I should feel safe with our captain in any circumstances."

"So should I," said Robin with enthusiasm, his eyes glistening with delight as he gazed on the angry ocean.

There was no thought of danger in the mind of any one at that moment. A