CHAPTER VI
UNDER POWER
The next morning I was so stiff that I hated the thought of getting up. But I managed to drag myself out of bed in time to have breakfast with Dad and Mother. They were laughing and talking as I limped down the stairs, rubbing my eyes and carefully stretching. I heard Mother say something about an organ. She quit talking when I came into the room. Dad was grinning. When breakfast was over I rode with him to the brickyard, hurrying to the boat to relieve Scoop and Peg.
“Well,” I grinned at the hungry ones, “did you entertain the whispering ghost last night with some choice hand organ selections?”
Peg shook his head.
“Nothing happened all night long,” he told me, disappointed.
At eight-thirty Scoop drove to the dock with the engine. We had a time unloading it. And when we finally got it into the boat we despaired for a time of ever being able to use it. We moved it this way and that way, trying various schemes. But we didn’t get anywhere.
The trouble was we had no way of getting our power into the water. It was no particular trick to set up the engine—that part of the task gave us no concern; but it was a trick, let me tell you, to figure out a practical propeller.
We finally decided that we would have to buy a drive shaft from Mr. Solbeam. This cost us another fifty cents. Our thirty dollars, I told Scoop, was going fast. We had spent five dollars and fifty cents.
“That’s all right,” he said easily. “We should expect to pay out our working capital. That’s what it’s for.”
“I’ll be glad,” I said, “when the money starts coming in.”
“The engine scheme,” he said, “is going to put us back a day or two. But it’s better, I think, to be a day or so behind, and do the thing right, than to start up in a hurry and make a halfway job of it.”
After a lot of puzzling work we finally got our engine bolted in position on the rear deck, to one side of the big rudder. Of course, it would have been better if we could have positioned the engine in the center of the deck where the rudder was. But that was out of the question.
We let our freckled chum do the most of the planning. For he seemed to have better ideas than any of the rest of us. He was already calling himself the “engineer.”
We made a two-blade propeller out of wood, clamping it on the lower end of the drive shaft, which had been given a braced bearing just above the water.
It took us a full half hour to get the engine started. I cranked and Scoop cranked and Peg cranked. When it did start it smoked worse than old Paddy Gorbett’s kitchen chimney. But Red said that was a good thing—it proved that the engine was getting plenty of oil.
“I can hear a knock,” Scoop said, listening.
“What do you expect for three dollars?” grunted Red, sticking up for his pet. “That knock won’t hurt anything. Forget it.”
We loosened the Sally Ann and the engineer shoved the gear-box lever into “low,” thus putting the propeller shaft into slow motion.
“Hurray!” yipped Scoop, throwing his cap into the air. “We’re moving!”
Red slipped the propeller into high gear.
“She’s working as slick as a button,” he shrieked above the engine’s roar.
“Some class to us,” yipped Peg, cocking his cap on one ear and posing, skipper-like, against the tiller.
“Watch your job,” I laughed, giving the tiller a jerk. “You almost ran us into the bank.”
“Let’s try backing up,” suggested Scoop.
Red pushed the lever into “reverse.” Slowly the Sally Ann came to a stop, then began to back up.
“Shove her into ‘forward,’ ” Scoop directed, “and we’ll take a trip down the canal.”
We went about a mile. Several times the engine stuttered and gagged, but that was nothing to worry about, Red said. Coming home we had to back up, for there wasn’t enough room in the canal for us to turn around. But to us the backing up was just as much fun as going ahead. We told ourselves that we were pretty smart. Not many boys our age could have done a job like this. And what did we care if it took us an hour to go a couple of miles? The Sally Ann was moving under her own power, and that was the main thing. We would have no trouble getting over to Ashton and back. The county seat was separated from Tutter by only a few miles. We could make an all-day trip of it, if necessary. A thing we weren’t short of was time.
To save ourselves the tiresome work of cranking the hand organ, we made a wooden pulley, to take the place of the crank, and ran a belt from the pulley to the engine. By speeding the engine we could make “The Old Oaken Bucket” sound like a jazzy fox trot.
It was now well along toward suppertime. So Scoop remained at the boat while the rest of us went home to eat. That night Peg and I stood guard, sleeping turn about. But there was no disturbance throughout the night. We saw nothing of either the whispering ghost or the tricky Stricker gang.
Scoop relieved us at six o’clock. And after breakfast the leader and I went to the Daily Globe office to order our tickets.
These would be ready for us at noon, we were told, and would cost us a dollar.
“Maybe,” Scoop said to the editor, giving me a nudge, “you’d like to have some more news about our show.”
The man laughed and brought out his pencil.
“We’re going to open up to-night.”
“Fine!”
“Our show is going to be a humdinger. Music and everything.”
“Music? Some one going to play a mouth organ?”
“No. We’ve bought an orchestrelle.”
“A which?”
“An orchestrelle,” Scoop repeated, grinning.
“How do you spell it?”
“Evidently,” Scoop joked, “you aren’t very well posted on the better class of musical instruments.”
“That,” sighed Mr. Stair, in pretended depression, “is one of the tragedies of my life. I’m on speaking terms with a jew’s-harp; but that’s the extent of my musical education, so to speak. Does this rig-a-ma-jig of yours start with an ‘a’ or an ‘o’?”
“O-r-c-h-e-s-t-r-e-l-l-e,” spelt Scoop. It surprised me that he didn’t get some of the letters twisted around. For he’s the poorest speller in our class. I’m one of the best.
“Who plays it?” the editor wanted to know.
“It plays itself—it’s automatic.”
Mr. Stair laughed when we told him about our engine.
“We wouldn’t have thought of it,” admitted Scoop, “if you hadn’t mentioned it in your newspaper.”
“Are you going to go over to Ashton with your show?”
“Maybe.”
An inquiry was then made of the editor regarding the cost of advertising in his newspaper.
“Our regular rate,” he informed, “is twenty cents a column inch. For two dollars, which will give you five inches, double column, you can make quite a showing. Is your copy ready?”
“It will be,” Scoop grinned, “in ten jerks of a lamb’s tail.”
Here is the advertisement that he wrote, after considerable changing and erasing:
WORLD’S GREATEST BLACK ART SHOW OPENS TO-NIGHT
To-night we will give our first show on our magnificent floating theater, the Sally Ann, which will leave the central bridge dock, for a moonlight trip down the canal, at 8:30.
We’ve got the best show of its kind on earth, and you don’t want to miss it.
Something doing every minute.
Kermann, the master magician of the age, will make his first appearance in Tutter.
He makes tables disappear right before your very eyes.
See the amazing “Living Head.”
A show for big people as well as kids.
Enjoy this moonlight excursion on our beautiful canal; hear the orchestrelle, the only musical instrument of its kind in town.
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Admission, 15c. |
Children, 10c. |
THE “SALLY ANN” SHOW COMPANY
Pretty soon we were in the street, headed for the show boat.
“This afternoon,” Scoop planned, “we’ll have a rehearsal; then we’ll start the engine and run the Sally Ann to the central bridge dock. If we play the organ we’ll attract a lot of attention. People will come running to find out what’s going on. Then they’ll see our ad in to-night’s paper. That’ll bring them out.”