Henry Leverage

“ Mike, considering discretion the better part of valor, managed to creep along the weather rail and spring for the engine-room companion. He sprawled down the ladder head foremost. He rebounded at the grating. He snatched up a spanner and glared upward. He braced a foot in the pit, out of which flashed the slow-moving cranks of the cross-compound engines.
His chin described a quarter-circle. The companion-way was darkened by the form of a man. Micky, still fighting, dropped down and struck the grating. Red Landyard was hurled after the little skipper. ”

“ The engineer’s question was answered by a curdling oath from Ivan. The leader of the Bolsheviki descended to the stokehold door. He peered through the gloom.
“You heard the bells!” he snarled through his beard. “You all die if you don’t keep up steam. We’re going to escape from the cutter. Fortunately it is an old one.”
Micky McMasters shook his head toward his two mates. He followed the Russian into the engine-room and picked up an oil can as Ivan motioned for the sentries to get on deck. A silence fell upon the brooding ocean.
Red Landyard appeared between the stokehold and the engine-room. ”

“ My mate, the tall man with the red face, is an American out of New Bedford. My first engineer came from Tyneside—where they build good ships. We take no back-slack from nobody. Show me your ship, says I, and I’ll work ’er across the Japan Sea and east by the line to Victoria.”
“That is settled,” said Ivan Alexandrovski. “You may come with me.”
Micky McMasters gathered the tattered collar of his dungaree coat around his unshaven neck.
“One more question before it becomes a contract,” he said suspiciously. “Are you loyal Russian or are you Bolshevik?” ”

“ He spat to the deck.
The Chinese flag which had been flying from the jack staff had been replaced by a red oblong. It showed baleful in the rays of the sun.
Mike turned his chin. He looked at Micky. The little skipper’s jaw was square set. His shoulders were thrown back. There was a fighting fire in his eyes.
“Wot happened?” asked Mike shrilly.
“Our friends are in charge of the ship,” said Micky over the bridge-rail. “Come up ’ere! They’re going to take a vote for captain, mate and engineer. They say all things in their government should be settled by a vote. ”

“ He is a smuggler!”
“No! ’E don’t look like one.”
“Looks is only skin deep. He ought to be skinned—with his thousand rubles a week.”
“’E ’as nobody to navigate the ship, and the tea ’as got to be taken hover the western Pacific.”
“Tay? Ye are daft? D’ye call that tay?”
Mike Monkey pointed a scornful finger at the boxes piled around the fore-hatch. He spat to the bridge-deck.
“That ain’t tay! That’s opium or hashish or fireworks of some sort. Ah never saw tay boxes with Russian letters on them.”
“There is good tea grown in some parts of Russia.”
“It’s grown! Aye, it’s grown! ”

“ Wot’s to prove we ain’t shipmates with a howlin’ bunch of anarchists? They’re quiet now. Them twa in the stokehold only look at me and chew on their beards when Ah give orders. They’re waitin’ for somethin’!”
Micky strode across the bridge. He gazed sadly at the ripples that curved from the Shongpong’s straight bow. He estimated the speed of the ship to be not more than seven knots an hour. There was no bridge-rail log.
He came back to Mike Monkey and Red Landyard.
“Briefly stated,” ye said, “we’re in the ’ands of Providence. Anything is likely to ’appen with all that talking fore and aft. ”

“ The citizen captain is not sure of his exact position. Assist us to obtain a reading and we will honor you by admission to the Benevolent Order of Reds. We intend to raise one billion dollars in Canada and the United States. ”