One of the propellers was slow, making a high pitched whining noise.
“Hailing the captain,” I spoke into the tube.
“What is it?”
“I suppose you know this, but I can’t fix the better part of the damage until we land, and if I don’t fix it soon, we’re going to land whether we want to or not.”
“Understood,” came his taciturn reply and then silence.
“Understood,” I mumbled to myself. “What do I know? I’m just the engineer. I just keep her running. I’m not the one who sailed us straight into the pirates’ territory. Bah!” I stoked the boiler. “Come on, old girl. Hold it together.” The whine of the broken propellor kept boring into my head with its incessant screeching. “We’ll get you fixed up,” I growled, “and maybe even get you out of here, if we can find a port.”
Mentally working through what I’d need to do once we landed, I began laying out the tools. How much time we’d get, who could say? What were the worst problems? The propellor was dead weight, and irritating. We weren’t holding pressure, which could be a thousand things, but probably tied to the propellor.
Oh well, I thought, I can at least trace the lines from the damaged areas. Patch up any leaks I find. At least it would give me an excuse to get away from that incessant noise.
Tale Told 