cried, desperately, “you get out of that boat! Get out of it, I say! Come home with me at once. I'm not going to be mixed up in any more of your wretched trial-trips. Come on, or I'll drag you out!”
Hawkins eyed me coldly for a minute, admonished me not to be an ass, and went on untying the launch.
He is stronger and heavier than I. Frankly, had I meditated such a course seriously, I couldn't have hoisted him out of his boat.
If I had ever studied medicine, I suppose I should have known how to stun Hawkins from above without killing him, but I have never even seen the inside of a hospital.
Again, could I have conjured up any plausible charge, I might have called a policeman and requested him to incarcerate Hawkins; at the moment, however, I was a bit too flustered for such refined strategy.
Obviously, I couldn't prevent Hawkins testing his motor, but my heart quaked at the idea of accompanying him.
On the other hand, it quaked quite as much before the prospect of returning to his wife and admitting that I had allowed Hawkins to sail away alone with his accursed motor.
If I went with him, a relatively easy death by drowning was about the best I could expect. If I didn't, his wife——
I stepped down into the launch.
“Coming, are you?” observed Hawkins. “Quite the sensible thing to do, Griggs. You'll never regret it.”
“God knows, I hope not,” I sighed.
“Now, in the first place, I may as well call your attention again to the motor. The A. P. stands for 'almost perpetual'—good name, isn't it? You don't know much about chemistry, Griggs, or I could make the whole proposition clear to you.”
“The great point about my motor, however, is that she's run by a fluid somewhat similar to gasolene—another of the distillation products of petroleum, in fact—which, having been exploded, passes into my new and absolutely unique catalytic condensers, where it is returned to its original molecular structure and run back into the reservoir.”
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