"God!--his wounds!" cried the Doctor, starting forward. As Farnsworth
had feared, they had broken open and were bleeding again. "It's a
ticklish thing," said Farnsworth, rumpling his hair. "If I give him
enough sedative to keep him quiet his heart may stop any time. If I
don't, he'll thrash himself to pieces in his delirium before the day's
over."
But Cleggett scarcely heeded the Doctor. The reference to "Loge's"
skull had flashed a sudden light into his mind. Whatever else "Loge"
was, Cleggett had little doubt that "Loge" was the tall man with the
stoop shoulders and the odd, skull-shaped scarfpin, for whom he had
conceived at first sight such a tingling hatred--the same fellow who
had so ruthlessly manhandled the flaxen-haired Heinrich on the roof of
the verandah the day before.
CHAPTER X
IN THE ENEMY'S CAMP
At seven o'clock that morning five big-bodied automobile trucks rolled
up in a thundering procession. As they hove in sight on the starboard
quarter and dropped anchor near the Jasper B., Cleggett recalled that
this was the day which Cap'n Abernethy had set for getting the sticks
and sails into the vessel. In the hurry and excitement of recent
events aboard the ship he had almost forgotten it.
A score of men scrambled from the trucks and began to haul out of them
all the essentials of a shipyard. Wheel, rudder, masts, spars,
bowsprit, quantities of rope and cable followed--in fact, every
conceivable thing necessary to convert the Jasper B. from a hulk into a
properly rigged schooner. Cleggett, with a pith and brevity
characteristic of the man, had given his order in one sentence.
"Make arrangements to get the sails and masts into her in one day," he
had told Captain Abernethy.
It was in the same large and simple spirit that a Russian Czar once
laid a ruler across the map of his empire and, drawing a straight line
from Moscow to Petersburg, commanded his engineers: "Build me a
railroad to run like that." Genius has winged conceptions; it sees
things as a completed whole from the first; it is only mediocrity which
permits itself to be lost in details.
Cleggett was like the Romanoffs in his ability to go straight to the
point, but he had none of the Romanoff cruelty.
Captain Abernethy had made his arrangements accordingly. If it pleased
Cleggett to have a small manufacturing plant brought to the Jasper B.
instead of having the Jasper B. towed to a shipyard, it was Abernethy's
business as his chief executive officer to see that this was done. The
Captain had let the contract to an enterprising and businesslike
fellow, Watkins by name, who had at once looked the vessel over, taken
the necessary measurements, and named a good round sum for the job.
With several times the usual number of skilled workmen employed at
double the usual rate of pay, he guaranteed to do in ten hours what
might ordinarily have taken a week.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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