The flag-lieutenant sticks his head in. "What shall the commissary
yeoman do with the tobacco and the tea?"
Furlong hollers to tear out the tin-foil and bring it up to him. They
brought it up, and a couple of Slavs, who had been working the tallow
into the shape of condensing-plates--helped out by two electric fans
and a stream of ice-water playing on them--they wrap the tin-foil
around the tallow plates.
"Mould some more!" yells Furlong--"and keep mouldin' 'em!"
As fast as one set would melt, out they'd ship another. There was
plenty of tallow--those Russian ships they're greasy with tallow--and
dozens of cases of tobacco and Lord knows how many boxes of tea. It
was a stirring sight below, with a dozen or so wild Slavs in their
underclothes smashing things open with axes and tobacco and tea flying
around regardless. Every blessed Russian that had a samovar and could
get hold of hot water begins to make tea. There must have been a
division of them sitting around between decks--at two in the
morning--drinking hot tea and sweating like horses, for it was hotter
than--oh, but it was hot that night!
"More tallow plates!" yells Furlong.
They had a carpenter's mate drafted below, a Finlander with a good eye,
and he was cutting out swell plates with a chisel, and as fast as he
did they would wrap them in the tin-foil and the two Slavs would
squeeze them into place.
Sure-enough sea-going condensing-plates those tallow inventions of
Furlong's were, and they did the business till the chief engineer
reported he had steam up, and we started to put out. "And now," says
the flag-lieutenant to Furlong, "your noble exertions are to be
rewarded. You shall see how we shall catch that _Plantagenet_ ship!"
"And a good job," I says to Furlong. "I hope they blow her out of
water when they do get her." Which sets him to studying.
"Say, Cahalan," he asks, "you don't suppose they'd do that?"
"Why not?"
"They'd have to prove she sent the wireless messages. Even I couldn't
prove that any man aboard her ever sent a wireless message," says
Furlong, "let alone that they sent any to the Japs about us."
"No matter," I says. "Everybody aboard here believes she did. And you
know she did. And if you'd seen those wild Slavs prancing around
between decks awhile ago, I bet you some of 'em wouldn't wait too long
to slip out a torpedo surreptishus-like from the torpedo chamber."
Furlong lays down his head-gear and ponders awhile. "If I thought
there was any danger--say, Cahalan--suppose his wife--the wireless
chap's--is aboard, as she probably is?" He reaches for the key.
"What're you goin' to do now?" I asks.
"I'm going," he says, "if those home-made, unpatented tallow
condenser-plates will hold for just one more charge--I'm going to tell
the _Plantagenet_ that a Russian battle fleet is headin' her way and
for her to steam to the south'ard about as fast as she can go and to
keep on steaming."
He fills the bird-cage gadjet with green and blue flashes again and
kept filling it till the tallow plates melted into a pool of grease.
The pool of grease hardened into a flat cone of tallow on the deck.
"Did you get it away?" I asks him.
"We'll soon see," he says.
When we made steam and got well outside, all we saw, far down on the
horizon, was a streak of black smoke going wide open to the south'ard.
The admiral let her go--with that start and she good for twenty-one
knots he had to. And while we were watching, up comes the commissary
yeoman to complain to the flag-lieutenant. When he came to put the
tobacco back in the boxes there was sixty-four plugs shy and thirteen
more had bites out of them.
The flag-lieutenant said he did not see how he could help the
commissary yeoman; and then, being pretty tired, we turned in.
When we woke up we were at anchor in Vladivostok.
They thought Furlong was all right after that, and wanted him to start
right in and overhaul a wireless plant in their yard ashore. He could
be an officer if he desired, they said.
"What d'y'think of it, Cahalan?" he says.
"They're good people, the Russians," I said, "and I like 'em. But I
like my own people better, and I will not. I'm going back home."
"And me," he says.
And we did, or back to the nearest thing to it--a cruiser of our own
which happened to be to anchor in Chee Foo.