My wife is averse to widowhood. Lately she exacted my solemn pledge not to assist Hawkins with any more of his diabolical inventions.
For a similar reason, his own good lady drew me aside a few evenings since, and insisted upon my promising to use every means, physical force included, which might prevent her “Herbert” from experimenting further with his motor.
Hawkins hadn't favored me with any confidences about the motor, and at the first opportunity I indicated with brutal directness that none was desired.
Hawkins inquired with frigid asperity as to my meaning; but the very iciness of his manner satisfied me that he understood perfectly, and, believing that he was sufficiently offended to keep entirely to himself all details of his machine—whatever it might be—I breathed more easily.
Some of these days one of Hawkins' inventions is going to take him on a personally conducted tour to a quiet little grave, and I have no wish to learn the itinerary beforehand.
Now, bitter experience has taught me that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom from complicity with the mechanical contrivances of Hawkins, and I should have been suspicious. Yet when Hawkins appeared Sunday morning and asked me to go for a little jaunt up the Hudson in his launch, I accepted with guileless good faith.
His launch was—perhaps it is still—the neatest of neat little pleasure boats, and when we left the house I anticipated several hours of keen enjoyment.
Crossing Riverside Drive, it struck me that Hawkins was hurrying, but the balmy air, the sunshine, and the beautiful sweep of the river filled my mind with infinite peace, and it was not until we had descended to the little dock that I smelled anything suggestive of rat.
Hawkins climbed into the launch, and I smiled benignly on him as I handed down the lunch and our overcoats. I had just finished passing them over when I stopped smiling so suddenly that it jarred my facial muscles.
“Where has the engine gone?” I demanded.
“That engine, Griggs,” responded Hawkins, pleasantly, “has gone where all other steam engines will go within the next two years—into the scrap heap.”
“Which very cheerful prophecy means——”
“It means, my dear boy, that before you stands the first full-sized working model of the Hawkins A. P. motor, patent applied for!”
The inventor flicked off a waterproof cover and exposed to view in the stern of the launch what looked like an inverted wash-boiler. At first glance it appeared to be merely a dome of heavy steel, bolted to a massive bed-plate, but I didn't spend much time examining the thing.
“There, Griggs,” began Hawkins, triumphantly, “in that small——”
“Hawkins,” I cried, desperately, “you get out of that boat! Get out of it, I say! Come home with me at once. I'm not going to be mixed up in any more of your wretched trial-trips. Come on, or I'll drag you out!”
Hawkins eyed me coldly for a minute, admonished me not to be an ass, and went on untying the launch.
He is stronger and heavier than I. Frankly, had I meditated such a course seriously, I couldn't have hoisted him out of his boat.
If I had ever studied medicine, I suppose I should have known how to stun Hawkins from above without killing him, but I have never even seen the inside of a hospital.
Again, could I have conjured up any plausible charge, I might have called a policeman and requested him to incarcerate Hawkins; at the moment, however, I was a bit too flustered for such refined strategy.
Obviously, I couldn't prevent Hawkins testing his motor, but my heart quaked at the idea of accompanying him.
On the other hand, it quaked quite as much before the prospect of returning to his wife and admitting that I had allowed Hawkins to sail away alone with his accursed motor.
If I went with him, a relatively easy death by drowning was about the best I could expect. If I didn't, his wife——
I stepped down into the launch.
“Coming, are you?” observed Hawkins. “Quite the sensible thing to do, Griggs. You'll never regret it.”
“God knows, I hope not,” I sighed.
“Now, in the first place, I may as well call your attention again to the motor. The A. P. stands for 'almost perpetual'—good name, isn't it? You don't know much about chemistry, Griggs, or I could make the whole proposition clear to you.”
“The great point about my motor, however, is that she's run by a fluid somewhat similar to gasolene—another of the distillation products of petroleum, in fact—which, having been exploded, passes into my new and absolutely unique catalytic condensers, where it is returned to its original molecular structure and run back into the reservoir.”
“Hence,” finished Hawkins, dramatically, “the fuel retains its chemical integrity indefinitely, and, as it circulates automatically through the motor, the little engine will run for months at a time without a particle of attention. Is that quite clear?”
“Perfectly,” I lied.
“All right. Now I'll show you how she starts,” smiled the inventor, opening with a key a little door in the wash-boiler and lighting a match.
“Careful, Hawkins, careful,” I ventured, backing toward the cabin.
“My dear fellow,” he sneered, “can you not grasp that in an engine of this construction, there is absolutely no danger of any kind of explo——”
Just then a heavy report issued from the wash-boiler. A sheet of flame seemed to flash from the little opening and precipitate Hawkins into my arms.
At any rate, he landed there with a violent shock, and I clutched him tightly, and tried to steady the launch.
“Leggo! Leggo!” he screamed. “Let me go, you idiot! It always does that! It's working now.”
He was right. The launch was churning up a peculiarly serpentine wake, and the motor was buzzing furiously.
Hawkins dived toward his machinery, tinkered it with nervous haste for a little, and finally managed to head the boat down-stream just as a collision with the Palisades seemed inevitable.
“Really, Griggs,” he remarked, smoothing down his ruffled feathers, “you mustn't interfere with me like that again. We might have hit something that time.”
“We did come near uprooting that cliff,” I admitted.
Hawkins thereupon ignored me for a period of three minutes. Then his temper returned and he began a discourse on the virtues of his motor.
It was long and involved and utterly unintelligible, I think, to any one save Hawkins. It lasted until we had passed the Battery and were in the shadow of Governor's Island.
Then it seemed time for me to remark:
“We're going to turn back pretty soon, aren't we, Hawkins?”
“Turn back? What for?”
“Well, if we're going up the Hudson, we can't run much farther in this direction.”
“Hang the Hudson!” smiled the inventor. “We'll go down around Sandy Hook, eat our lunch, and be back in the city at two, sharp. Why, Griggs, this is no scow. What speed do you suppose this motor can develop?”
“I give it up.”
“One hundred knots an hour!”
“Indeed?”
“Confound it! You don't believe it, do you?” snapped Hawkins, who must have read my thoughts. “Well, she can make it easy. I'll just start her up to show you.”
Argument with Hawkins is futile. I saved my breath on the chance of finding better use for it later on.
Hawkins unlocked his little door, fished around in the machinery, and fastened the door again with a calm smile.
Simultaneously, the launch seemed to leap from the water in its anxiety to get ahead. For a few seconds it quivered from end to end. Then it settled down at a gait that actually made me gasp.
I am not positive that we made one hundred knots to the hour, but I do know that I never traveled in an express train that hastened as did that poor launch when the Hawkins A. P. motor began to push it through the water.
An account of our trip down the Narrows and into the Lower Bay would be interesting, but extraneous. Hawkins sat erect beside his infernal machine, looking like a cavalryman in the charge. I squatted in the cabin and watched things flash past.
The main point is that we reached the open water without smashing anything or smashing into anything.
“Well, I think we may as well swing around,” said Hawkins, glancing at his watch. “It's wonderful, the control I have over the launch now. Every bit of the steering-gear is located in that steel dome, along with the motor, Griggs. Nothing at all exposed but this little wheel.
“You observed, probably, that I set it a few moments ago, so that the wind wouldn't blow us about, and haven't touched it since. Now note how we shall turn back.”
Hawkins grasped his little wheel, puffed up his chest, and gave a tremendous twist.
And the wheel snapped off in Hawkins' hands!
“Why—why—why——” he stuttered, in amazement.
“Yes, now you've done it!” I rapped out, savagely. “How the dickens are we to get back?”
“There, Griggs, there,” said Hawkins, “don't be so childishly impatient. I shall simply unlock this case again and control the steering-gear from the inside. Certainly even you must be able to understand that.”
The calm superiority of his tone was maddening.
One or two of my sentiments defied restraint.
Heaven knows I didn't suppose it would make Hawkins nervous to hear them, but it did. His hands shook as he fumbled with the key of his steel box, and at a particularly vicious remark of mine he stood erect.
“Well, Griggs, you've put us in a hole this time!” he groaned.
“How?”
“You made me so nervous that I snapped that key off short in the lock!”
“What!” I shrieked.
“Yes, sir. The motor's locked up in there with fuel enough to keep her going for three months. I can't stop her or move the rudder without getting into the case, and nothing but dynamite would dent that case!”
“Then, Hawkins,” I said, a terrible calm coming over me, “we shall have to go straight ahead now until we hit something or are blown up. Am I right?”
“Quite right,” muttered Hawkins, defiantly. “And it's all your fault!”
I transfixed the inventor with a vindictive stare, until he abandoned the attempt at bravado and looked away.
“We—we may blow back, you know,” he said, vaguely, addressing the breeze.
“The chances of that being particularly favorable by reason of your having set your miserable rudder to correspond with the present wind?” I asked. “Can't we tear up the woodwork and contrive some sort of rudder?”
“We could,” admitted Hawkins, “if it wasn't all riveted down with my own patented rivets, which can't be removed, once they're set.”
Hawkins' rivets are really what they claim to be. Only one consideration has delayed their universal adoption. They cost a trifle less than one dollar apiece to manufacture and set.
But they stay where they are put, and I knew that if the launch's woodwork was held together by them, it wasn't likely to come apart much before Judgment Day.
“Real nice mess, isn't it, Hawkins?” I said.
“It—it might be worse.”
“Far worse,” I agreed. “We might be wallowing helplessly around in those heaving billows, or a gale might be tiring itself all out in the effort to swamp us. But, as it is, we are merely careering gaily over the sunlit waves at an unearthly speed. In a day or two, Hawkins, we shall sight the French coast, barring accidents, go ashore, and——”
“By Jove, Griggs!” exclaimed the inventor, lighting up on the instant. “Do you know, I hadn't thought of that? Just let me see. Yes, my boy, at this rate we shall be in the Bay of Biscay Monday night or Tuesday morning, at the latest. Think of it, Griggs! Think of the fame! Think of——”
I couldn't bear to think of it any longer. I knew that if I thought about it for another ten seconds, I should hurl Hawkins into the sea and go to my own watery grave with murder on my hands.
The bow of the launch being the furthest possible point from its owner, I gathered up my overcoat, cigars, and a sandwich, and crouched there, keeping out of the terrific wind as much as possible, watching for a possible vessel and munching the food with a growing wonder as to whether I should ever return to the happy home wherein it was prepared.
There I sat until sunset, and it was the latest sunset I have ever observed. With dusk descending over the lonely ocean, I returned in silence to Hawkins.
He was in bounding spirits. He chattered incessantly about the trip, planned a lecture tour—“Across the Atlantic in Forty Hours”—formed a stock company to manufacture his motor, offered me the London agency at an incredible salary, and built a stately mansion just off Central Park with his own portion of the proceeds.
Having babbled himself dry, Hawkins informed me that salt air invariably made him sleepy, and crawled into the cabin for slumber.
And he slept. It passed my understanding, but the man had such utter confidence in himself and his unintentional trip that he snored peacefully throughout the night.
I didn't. I felt that my last hours in the land of the living should be passed in consciousness, and I spent that terrible time of darkness in more or less prayerful meditation.
After ages, the dawn arrived. I lit another cigar, and wriggled wearily to the bow of the boat and scanned the waters.
There was a vessel! Far, far away, to be sure, but steaming so that we must cross her path in another fifteen minutes.
I tore off my overcoat, scrambled to the little deck, wound one arm about a post, and waved the coat frantically.
Nearer and nearer we came to the steamer. More and more I feared that the signal might be unnoticed, or noticed too late. But it wasn't.
I have known some happy sights in my time, but I never saw anything that filled me with one-half the joy I felt on realizing that the steamer-people were lowering one of their boats.
They were doing it, there was no doubt about the matter. In five minutes we should be near enough to their cutter to swim for it.
I dived to the stern to awaken Hawkins.
He was already awake. He stood there, tousled and happy, sniffing the crisp air, and he had seen the approaching boat.
“Got it ready?” he inquired, placidly.
“Got what ready?”
“Why, the message,” exclaimed Hawkins, opening his eyes in astonishment. “We'll have to hustle with it, I reckon.”
“Hawkins, what new idiocy is this?” I gasped.
“Surely we're going to give that steamer a few lines to tell the world about our trip?”
Seconds passed, before the full, terrible significance of his words filtered into my brain.
“Do you mean to say,” I roared, “that you are not going to swim for that boat?”
“Certainly I do mean to say it,” he replied stiffly. “Let me have your fountain pen, Griggs.”
I took one glance at the boat. I took another at Hawkins. Then I gripped him about the waist and threw my whole soul into the task of pitching him overboard.
Hawkins, as I have said, is heavier than I. He puffed and strained and pulled and hauled at me, swearing like a trooper the while. And neither of us budged an inch.
The cutter came nearer, nearer, always nearer. Thirty seconds more and we should shoot by it forever. The thought of losing this chance of rescue almost maddened me.
I had just gathered all my strength for one last heave when the middle of my back experienced the most excruciating pain it has ever known. Something seemed to lift me clear of the launch, with Hawkins in my arms; I heard a dull report from somewhere, and then we dropped together, right through the surface of the sparkling Atlantic Ocean!
Hawkins was picked up first. When I came to the surface, two dark-skinned sailormen were dragging him in, struggling and cursing and pointing wildly toward the horizon, where his launch was careering away with the speed of the wind.
It was the French liner La France which had the honor of our rescue. She deposited us in New York on Wednesday morning.
Over the rest of this tale hover some painful memories. I am not a fighting man, but I am free to say that when my wife and Mrs. Hawkins delivered to me their joint opinion on broken promises, their sex alone saved them from personal damage.
It was upon me that the blame appeared to rest entirely. At least, Hawkins didn't come in for any of it at the time.
Just at the moment of that emotional interview, Hawkins was busy in his work-shop—perfecting something.
It seems that the motor, after all, was our salvation. Hawkins says that some of the power must have dribbled out of the machine proper and blown the steel dome from its foundations.
Assuredly there was plenty of energy behind the thing when it struck me; I have darting pains in that portion of my anatomy every damp day.
The launch has never been reported, which is probably quite as well.
Perhaps it has reached the open Polar Sea, and is butting itself into flinders against the ice-cakes. Perhaps it is terrorizing some cannibal tribe in the southern oceans by inflicting dents on the shoreline of their island.
Wherever the poor little boat may be, it contains eleven of my best cigars, the better part of a substantial meal, and, what is in my eyes of an ideal generator of power.
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