AS an easy matter of course, Major Terwilliger won the pool. The land
sighted proved to be Cape Gracias á Dios, the easternmost point of
Nicaragua. It would say itself that the Mosquito Coast, low, swampy,
and with only three practicable harbors along its three-hundred-mile
sweep, could have no attractions for a party of winter pleasurers, and
we were leaving Cape Gracias astern when the _Andromeda's_ course was
suddenly changed and she was headed for land.
Climbing to the bridge a little later, where I found Van Dyck setting
the course for the Madeira-man who had the wheel, I learned the reason
for the unannounced change.
"Trouble in the engine-room," Van Dyck explained. "The port propeller
shaft is running hot and threatening to quit on us. We'll have to lay
up for a few hours until Haskell can find out what has gone wrong."
"The shaft hasn't been giving any trouble heretofore, has it?" I asked.
"No; Haskell says it began to heat all at once, shortly after we
sighted land."
"You'll put in at Gracias?"
He nodded. "The harbor isn't much, and the town is still less. But we
don't need anything but an anchorage. Haskell thinks we won't be held
up very long."
That was a cheering prediction, but the event proved it to be too
optimistic. The mechanical trouble turned out to be in the thrust
bearing of the propeller shaft, and it was more serious than Haskell,
chief of the engine-room squad, had supposed it would be. The bearing
which, like everything else on the yacht, had been cared for with
warship thoroughness, had apparently run dry and it was badly scored
and "cut," as a machinist would say. The repair called for hours
of patient scraping and filing, and Haskell, who had served as an
assistant engineer in the Navy, was properly humiliated.
"It sure gets my goat, Mr. Preble," he confided to me when I climbed
down into his bailiwick some three or four hours after we had dropped
anchor in Gracias á Dios harbor. "It looks as if it was on me, and
maybe it is, but I've never had anything like this happen to me
before--not since I began as an oiler on one of the old Cunarders.
We have automatic lubrication; all the latest wrinkles; and yet that
cussed shaft's tore up like it had been runnin' dry for a week. You're
an engineer--I just wish you'd look at it."
To oblige him I donned overalls and crawled down into the shaft
tunnel. A glance at the excoriated bearing showed that Haskell hadn't
exaggerated. Quinby, Haskell's first assistant, was scraping and
smoothing in a space that was too confined to let a man take the kinks
out of his back, and in which there was no room for two men to work.
"That is no hurry job," I told Haskell, after I had crawled out. "I
think I may safely tell our people that they may have shore leave, if
they want it."
"You can that," Haskell grinned. "We'll be right here to-morrow
morning, and blamed lucky if we can heave up the mud hook by some time
to-morrow afternoon."
It was too late to spread the news after I left the engine-room. When I
reached the main deck all of our ship's company had apparently turned
in, though there were lights in the smoking-room to hint that the
card-players were still at their favorite pastime. But as I went aft to
smoke a bed-time pipe I found Madeleine Barclay curled up in one of the
deep wicker chairs.
"Pardon me," I said; "I didn't know there was any one here. Don't let
me disturb your maiden meditations. I'll vanish."
"You needn't," she returned quite amiably; then, seeing the pipe: "And
you may smoke if you want to. You know well enough that I don't mind.
How long do we stay here?"
"That is upon the knees of the gods. I've just been below, and I should
say we are good for twenty-four hours, or maybe more, though Haskell
thinks we may get out by to-morrow afternoon."
"Do we go ashore?"