Chapter I: Quick Action

At a quarter to five in the afternoon, when the thing really began as far as I myself was concerned, I happened to be swinging my legs from the stringpiece of the town dock of Port Washington. How and why I had been sitting there some two hours, in a hot, summer sun, will develop in due course. Sufficient now to state that my frame of mind was one of general disgust at the world’s handling; this coupled to a dark-brown ennui.

Quite listlessly I had been running my eye over a trimlined launch of the “day-cruiser” type that was moored, bow and stern, to a float below me. For the most part, I love boats far more than people; so it must have been something out of the ordinary that made me shift my attention suddenly from the craft itself to the two men who manned it.

One, a clean-limbed, undersized man of about forty, much spattered with gilt braid and buttons, I sized up as the captain. He stood on the float alongside the diminutive wheelhouse, steadying the slight roll of the craft with his left hand, while his right constantly sought his watch in nervous consultation of the exact time.

“A precise and pompous bit of a fool!” I remember grunting to myself. But my gaze happened that instant to travel toward the other.

This fellow hadn’t quitted the boat, but busied himself lumbering, I thought, about the engine, which was situated in the after cockpit. A loosely knit chap he was, whose fingers were all thumbs.

And I, who fairly caress a bit of machinery, wondered how in thunder such a clumsy cuss could ever have got the position as engineer of so trim a little vessel.

But the little skipper again caught my attention, for he suddenly snapped his watch case and quickened to attention. His gaze never left the road that led to the wharf, which, by the way, was the way to the railroad station.

An auto, quick-driven and skidding slightly in the dust, rounded the turn by the shore hotel and took to the wharf’s planks.

Now, how it was that my eyes whirled from this decidedly new interest back to the heavy man in the boat I don’t know; but I am certainly glad now that I did glance that way on that particular second.

For, with a furtive look at his little chief, the fellow made a quick step forward and to starboard. It was but a second that his hand groped under a locker; but, when he withdrew it, his face lighted to a grin. He checked it quickly, though, as he slid back to his old position before the flywheel.

The car groaned to sharply applied brakes directly alongside the gangway that led steeply down to the float, for the tide was low.

Immediately a man popped from the limousine, and handed down a closely veiled woman; then he slipped a coin to the chauffeur, who forthwith made off.

Somehow or other, I was getting mighty interested by this time; though, of course, none of it was any of my business.

The woman wore a dream of a little, high-heeled boot, which showed prettily enough in her terror of the sharply sloping plank. But the man steadied her firmly to the float, where he nodded curtly to the little, gilded captain.

“Well, we made it, Stevens,” I heard him say.

Then he called his own bluff at being the gentleman, for he lighted a cigarette, drawing his match across a polished mahogany panel of the wheelhouse. I could see the little skipper fairly writhe. He had my sympathy; for, owner or no owner, right is right.

“New rich, and thinks he’s the real thing,” I muttered to myself, little realizing how soon I was to assume another rôle.

With but a moment’s delay, the girl reached a seat on a transom of the midship half cabin; and, just before joining her, the man drew out a handsomely jeweled watch.

“No time to spare, eh, Stevens?” he inquired, a bit anxiously, I thought.

Stevens deftly cast off the moorings and took his position at the wheel.

“I’ll get there,” said he, as he jangled the bell for “ahead.”

The lumbering engineer leisurely grasped the starting lever and drew her up to compression. The coil buzzed viciously, but no cough told of explosion.

His surprise was a fine imitation of the genuine as he cranked once more, but without result. The engine lay dead. Then I saw a sharp look of dismay flash across the features of the man I reckoned to be the owner.

“What’s the matter?” he snapped, in a tone far removed from his former easy one.

“Don’t know,” grumbled the engineer surlily. “She wuz runnin’ all right comin’ over.”

He went on with his futile cranking. Then the girl leaped to her feet with a little cry, the wind whipping aside the veil a moment. Her face decided me. If there was anything I could do to take away that look of anxiety, almost terror, I’d do it. And, furthermore, I was pretty sure I could. I knew I’d be taking a chance; but I didn’t believe it was much of a one; and, besides, I like to take chances.

By the time I had reached the boat’s side, Stevens had thrust aside the burly fellow, and was trying to start the balky machine himself, while the owner chafed in bitterest impatience.

I caught his eye.

“I think I can start her,” I said simply.

He must have read something in my tone that conveyed more than the usual talk of the “butter-in.”

“You understand engines?” he queried sharply.

“Enough to know that they need gasoline to run with,” I replied; and, before even the engineer knew what I was up to, I entered the cockpit, and strode quickly over to the tank locker, where I found my guess correct. I was no longer taking any chances.

A stopcock which I had counted upon finding there was there, and turned off.

“I saw him turn it off a moment before you arrived,” said I.

I know now I should have been a trifle more diplomatic, and I might well have regretted it; for the fellow had me nicely by the throat in the time you could count three.

But aid came speedily.

With a neatness and dispatch with which I would never have credited his build, the owner shot out a white-knuckled fist, and caught the engineer prettily beneath the cheek.

There’s a spot that effects the result nicely.

Grip relaxed, he toppled over the rail. The next second he bobbed to the surface, gurgling stertorously.

I had regained my breath from the strangle by this time.

“Here, quick!” said I, springing for the stopcock and turning it on full. “I’ll run her for you.”

I had caught the glitter of a constable’s star in the small crowd that had collected on the dock from nowhere. I realized that explanation would delay.

And little Skipper Stevens proved a man of quick action, too; for this time the bell jangled with a result.

I threw her over, and she caught on the first spark.

Two minutes after, we shaved the angle of the channel and headed straight for Plum Beach Point.

That engine, given fuel, certainly was a sweet-running piece of metal.