As Jack had prophesied, they did have to “hold down the job for some time.” In fact, dating from the morning on which Medway escorted them to the engine-room of the Valkyrie, the two boys entered on what was perhaps the strangest period of their lives in many respects. Virtually prisoners, they yet found a certain pleasure in oiling, running and ministering to the big engine. Their innate love of machinery found full play during the following days and nights.

The gale blew itself out after two days, but they still were kept at their posts. Medway had ordered two cots provided for them, and their meals were served below. On trying to reach the deck for a breath of air, after a long vigil at the engine, Jack found that the engine-room was well guarded. At the door was stationed a husky sailor who roughly told the boy to “get back where he belonged.” He had no choice but to obey.

In this way the days went by, the boys taking watch and watch, four hours on and four off. Medway or Hemming visited them regularly, but made no comments, nor did they vouchsafe any information as to the whereabouts of the yacht. Had the boys only known how the other prisoners were faring, and what was ultimately to become of them all, they might have been almost happy in their jobs as young engineers. But as things were, their constant anxiety on these scores outweighed any pleasure they found in running the machinery of the yacht.

Judkins evidently was still confined to his bunk. At least he did not put in an appearance. And so, day after day went by and the yacht forged steadily on, and the boys, working in the engine-room, had no means of knowing her course or destination; for, unlike some craft, the Valkyrie carried no “tell-tale” compass in her engine-room.

Thus two weeks passed. Two weeks of absolute calm, so far as the boys could judge, during which the yacht was forced forward at her full speed capacity, which was eighteen knots. It was one day toward the end of Jack’s watch when the thing happened which was to lead them all into the jaws of disaster.

During the time that he had been on duty the boy had noticed that the engine kept slowing down. Impatient janglings from the pilot house he met as best he could with more steam. But at length even this resource failed. It was plain enough that the Valkyrie was losing speed rapidly.

Jack went over the engine with zealous care, but so far as he could see the fault did not lie there. On the contrary, every rod, crank and bolt appeared in good order. Suddenly a thought struck him. He hastened across the steel floor to the gauge on the bulkhead. What it told him caused the boy to emit a whistle of dismay.

The steam pressure had fallen to seventy-five pounds. While he watched, it dropped two pounds more, and the engine slowed down more and more perceptibly.

He threw open the door leading to the fire-room. In that black hole he saw the dim forms of the stokers on duty flitting about like gnomes in the dust-laden darkness. He hailed the nearest of them.

“What’s the trouble?”

The answer came with a grumbling rumble from the half-naked fireman as he threw open a furnace door and stood in the glare of the fire.

“S’ help me bob, kid, there ain’t more’n three tons of coal in the bunkers an’ the boss tole us to keep steam down.”

“Three tons!” echoed Jack. “How long will that run us?”

“Not h’enuff so’s you could nowtice it,” rejoined the Britisher.

“Have you any idea where we are?”

“Yus. Leastways, I ‘eard ‘em torkin’ erbout h’it ‘fore I come on watch.”

“Where are we, then?”

“H’about ten north, fifty west, I ‘eard ‘em a sayin’.”

“That’s where?” asked Jack anxiously. He knew that ten north meant somewhere pretty close to the equator. In fact, for days past he and Tom had discarded all the clothing they could dispense with, for it had grown insufferably hot in the engine-room.

“H’off the cowst h’of South Ameriky somewheres; bloaw me h’if h’I knows where,” was the vague response. “H’all h’I knows h’is that h’if we doan’t get no cowl, we doan’t get no steam.”

A quick step sounded behind Jack. As the footsteps rang out on the metal floor the boy turned swiftly. Medway confronted him.

“What you doing here?”

“Finding out how much coal we had,” responded Jack. “There’s hardly enough steam to run the engines.”

“You get back where you belong,” roared Medway, “and you, you salt-horse-eating Britisher, you get back to your work. D’ye hear me? I’ll have stuff enough down here before long to get us as far as we want to go.”

As Jack once more entered the engine-room these words stuck in his mind. “As far as we want to go.” They must, then, be nearing their destination. And what was to follow? When he awakened Tom the two had a long talk about it without coming to any definite conclusion on the matter.

One thing was positive, steam had been raised again. By what means was evident when the British stoker, who appeared inclined to be friendly, stuck his head through the bulkhead door.

“They’re a-tearing the bloomin’ ship to pieces,” he confided, and then withdrew as Medway’s step sounded on the ladder.

“How’s she workin’?” he asked briefly.

“All right,” replied Jack; “plenty of steam now.”

“Yes; and we’ll have plenty if we tear everything out of the old hooker and leave nothing but the shell,” ground out Medway fiercely.

“Gracious, Tom,” remarked Jack a few minutes later, before he turned in, “I guess they’re stripping the ship of everything that’ll burn. Hark at that?”

Above the rumble of the engines they could hear plainly through the ventilators the crashing of axes on deck, as the vandals in charge of the yacht hacked down anything that would burn, in their mad desire to reach whatever haven they were aiming for. But if the boys could have been on deck they would have perceived a strong reason for these desperate efforts to keep the yacht moving. Out of the south there was coming toward them a dread harbinger of the terror of those waters.

A sickly-looking yellow halo around the sun, a sullen heaving of the sea, which was of an odd, metallic hue, and a queer odor in the atmosphere, which was still as death,—all these signs, coupled with an alarming drop in the barometer, showed those in charge of this ominous voyage that a tropical hurricane was fast approaching, and that for the second time since the boys had come on board her the Valkyrie was in for a battle for existence.

But of all this, of course, they knew nothing. All they realized was that it was insufferably hot in their oily, murky engine-room. From time to time they were compelled to go to the funnel-shaped bottom of one of the ventilators to get even a breath of air. Medway or Hemming kept dodging up and down all day, and each time they appeared their faces were furrowed more deeply with anxiety.

It was about the middle of Tom’s watch, namely five-thirty in the afternoon, that the boy, without the slightest warning, was lifted almost off his feet by a heavy lurch of the ship. He saved himself from slipping into the revolving machinery only by clutching at an upright stanchion. At the same instant his ears were assailed by a diabolical screeching, as a wind, like the blast from a furnace mouth, was forced down the ventilators. It was an unearthly sound; a bedlam like that which might have been the fitting accompaniment of a witches’ frolic.

Jack, fast asleep on the couch, was rolled violently off it and grabbed by Tom in time to save him from tumbling into the crank-pit.

“W-w-w-what is it?” gasped the newly awakened boy, his eyes wide with amazement at the inferno of noises.

“I guess it’s a hurricane,” came Tom’s response, “and we’re running the engines on furniture!”

As he spoke, the Valkyrie appeared to be lifted skyward by a giant hand and then pushed violently down again to an abysmal depth.

“A few more of those and—good-night,” spoke Jack, whose face had grown pale as ashes.

The next few hours were filled with terror. Medway, revolver in hand, stationed himself in the fire-room, keeping the terrified stokers at work on pain of instant death. Into the furnaces of the hurricane-driven ship was piled everything aboard that would burn. Boats were ruthlessly smashed, costly mahogany and ebony trim and panelling, chairs, tables, anything, everything that was combustible.

The boys toiled as if in a nightmare. Half stunned by the violence of the vessel’s movements, sick, dizzy and aching in every limb, they kept at their tasks. But not long before midnight the end came with the suddenness of a thunder-clap. No time was left for thought even, much less preparation.

They felt the Valkyrie lifted bodily upward and then rushed downward again with appalling force. There followed a crash that seemed to be sufficient to smash the stout structure of steel and iron into a mass of junk. The boys felt themselves hurled bodily across the engine-room by some unseen force.

Then came a shout. It was Medway’s voice.

“Everyone for himself!”

The boys rushed on deck, not knowing what to expect. After that appalling crash they hardly knew if the Valkyrie was yet actually under their feet.

“Whatever has happened, this is the finish!” gasped Jack as they went.