All the men looked worried, including Commander Gorringe.
“Let us pray,” he said.
Commander Gorringe & the entire crew knelt down in prayer, and so did I. There was silence, except for the water slapping against the hull. I thought about the leak in the boiler & what could be done to repair it. I had worked on boilers with my father. Then I came up with an idea.
“Plug it with gum!” I shouted.
The men stopped there prayer. They turned around & looked at me.
“What did you say?” asked Commander Gorringe.
“Plug the hole in the boiler with your gum,” I told him. “It will seal it up so you can continue on your way.”
Commander Gorringe thought about what I had said for a moment. Then he ordered the men to take the gum out of their mouths & combine it into one large ball. He brought it over to me.
“Do you know how to plug a hole in a boiler?” he asked.
“I can try,” I replied.
He unlocked the chain from my leg & took me to the engine room. The boiler was not the same as the boilers I had worked on with my father, but I figured all boilers work the same way. I stuffed the ball of gum into the hole, pushing the gum with my fingers until it filled the gap. I knew it would take a while for the gum to harden, but it appeared to have sealed up the hole. The engine roared to life.
“It works!” somebody said.
A few of the men clapped me on the back. When we had returned to full speed, Commander Gorringe smiled at me. Maybe he will let me stay alive for a while. Maybe he will throw somebody else overboard in my place. I resolved to make myself as useful as possible so he will allow me to live & get to New York City.
JUNE 23, 1880
I have not written here in several days because I have been very busy working on the ship. After 12 days at sea, we finally reached Gibraltar, which is at the lower tip of Spain & just miles from the north coast of Africa. The Dessoug is docking here for a few days so we can take on more coal—550 tons of it. & I feel like I shoveled it all myself.
Some fancy pants politicians & their wives came aboard to take a peek at the obelisk by candlelight. They were disappointed that it was covered with wood. But Mr. Gorringe refused to remove it for them.
He could have kicked me off the ship here in Gibraltar. Then he would not have to feed me anymore. He could have had me sent back to England. But he sees that I am a hard worker & has decided to let me stay onboard. He is a good man. I was given some clean clothes to wear & even a cot to sleep in.
At the end of the day, me & a bunch of the crewmen jumped into the water. I had not had a bath in weeks. It felt like heaven.
JUNE 26, 1880
After three days of working to get The Dessoug shipshape, we left Gibraltar around midnight. From here, it will be a straight shot to America. They say it is about 5,800 kilometers, or as the Americans would say, 3,600 miles. If we have no big problems, we should reach New York City sometime next month. I will get a hot dog then.
The sea is smooth. The winds are fair. We are unlikely to bump into icebergs during the summer months, so there should be no problems. But I never trust the weather.
JULY 1, 1880
We passed the Azores, a group of small islands in the Atlantic. We did not stop. Commander Gorringe wants to get to New York as quickly as possible. He said he needs to get the obelisk to Central Park before winter sets in & it might be too cold for the men to work outside.
I am not getting paid, but everyone is treating me like I am a member of the crew now. The other men seem to enjoy my company, even though we don’t speak the same language. Today I showed them how to juggle, something I learned to do when I was in France. Juggling is a fairly simple skill, but the men seem to think it is amazing for a human being to keep 3 balls in the air at once. They kept shaking their heads & saying, “3 balls. 2 hands. How?” Many of them wanted to try it, & there was much laughter when the balls went flying all over the place.
I have been working hard too, shoveling coal, swabbing the deck, & doing other chores. So I have had little time to rite here. We are still more than 3,000 kilometers, I mean 1,800 miles, from America.
JULY 6, 1880
Disaster. At 2 o’clock this afternoon there was a sudden BANG & the engines stopped. Once again, we were dead in the water. Maybe this ship is cursed. Maybe I should have gotten off in Gibraltar, when I had the chance.
As soon as it happened, everybody looked at me. Even Commander Gorringe.
“What are you looking at me for?” I asked.
“You are the fixer,” one of the crew said.
We went to the engine room to see what the problem was. At first I thought the boiler had broken & I would be blamed for it. But it wasn’t the boiler. It was the crankshaft, which is a long metal rod that connects the engine to the propellers. It had broken in 2.
The other men seem to think that I am a wizard mechanic, which I am not. True, I am pretty good at fixing things that break, but I cannot repair a shattered crankshaft. Astonishingly (that is a big word) Commander Gorringe found a spare crankshaft in storage.
“Can you install it, Thomas?” he asked me.
“I’ll try.”
I had never seen a crankshaft before. I didn’t even know what a crankshaft was. But I looked the broken one over, & it seemed pretty obvious how to remove it and install the new one. It would not be easy work. We would be floating in the middle of the Atlantic for a few days, at least.
Commander Gorringe ordered the sails up so we could catch some wind. But the sails don’t do much. I don’t know how the old time explorers from Europe made it across the ocean without steam engines & propellers.
JULY 9, 1880
Another situation came up today. While we were floating there and I was working on the crankshaft, one of the crew spotted something in the distance. It was a ship, & it was steaming directly toward us at great speed.
“High alert!” shouted Commander Gorringe.
He ordered everyone to hide anything of value. I don’t have anything of value (well, maybe this diary), but I knew what he was worried about. The men on the other ship could be pirates. If they found out about the obelisk below our deck, they might try take over the Dessoug, rob us, or worse—execute us. I was afraid, & again deeply regretted not getting off in Gibraltar.
