“I know something about the expense of cabling from Porto Rico,” Dick said. “A reporter finds out a little of everything, you know. I interviewed a man once who had been a cable operator in San Juan. He happened to be there when the Count de Paris arrived on his way from Havana to Barcelona. The count’s daughter was very sick in England, and he sat down in the office and wrote her a letter of one thousand four hundred words, and cabled it. That cost him over four thousand dollars.” “That might do for a millionaire like the Count de Paris,” the captain laughed, “but I don’t think my owners would stand it. Now we must take hold of the Board of Survey matter, and I want you to do a little headwork for me there. You’re just the man to do it, too.” “Well, we’ve got safely out of one bad scrape to-night,” Dick answered; “I think we’ll pull through the next one.” “The main thing I’m afraid of, Sumner,” the captain said, “is that the Board of Survey may order us into dry dock for repairs. There is no dry dock at Porto Rico, and we’d have to go over to St. Thomas. If they should make us put in a new propeller, we’d have to cable to England for it, and that would keep us in St. Thomas at least a month or six weeks.” “That would be very bad for me,” he continued, “to have the ship lose so much time. The owners won’t say much about my stranding the ship, if I don’t lose too much time over it. Now what we’ve got to do is to influence the Board of Survey so that they’ll let us proceed on our voyage, and I want to do that through you.” “Through me!” Dick exclaimed. “Yes, through you. You see shipmasters ain’t very good writers, as a rule, and it will be an easy matter to arrange things so that they’ll ask you to act as clerk and do the writing. Then whenever they get stuck for a sentence to put in the report, you can suggest one. And of course you’ll suggest the things that we make up our minds we want in the report. Oh, that will work; I’ve seen that done before.” “Well,” Dick laughed, “that seems fair enough. Of course you’ll not want me to put in anything that isn’t fair and square. I want to help you in every honest way I can.” They sat up late discussing the report they wanted the board to make, and the substance of it all was that the ship was seaworthy and should be allowed to proceed on her voyage. “That’s it!” the captain exclaimed; “of course she’s seaworthy. We’re moving under our own steam, ain’t we, and taking hardly any water? We’re fit to go around the world in. But I don’t honestly believe,” he added “that there’s more than part of one blade left in our propeller.” When the Smeaton Tower lay safely in San Juan harbor next morning Dick went out with Captain Godfree in one of the small boats, and they saw for themselves what had happened to the propeller. Two blades were gone entirely, the third was broken off about six inches from the shaft; and the fourth, the only serviceable blade, had lost but a few inches from its tip.