After him, Ned is the first one to rise, a leftover from his time as a ranger in the woods. Ned therefore makes breakfast, to keep himself busy till the others wake. In the kitchen he bakes some bread, and prepares orange juice. Due to the steam engine they have the luxury of a cold store, where they keep most of their foodstuffs. But as he walks into the room this morning it is not as cold as normal. So he takes the oranges, and walks over to the engine room, where he finds Nillian reading.
"Hmm, the cold store? Let me check ... No, everything looks alright from here. I will take a look at it, thanks for noticing!"
As Ned returns to the kitchen Nillian gets up, and walks over to the steam engine. The whole engine is housed in different compartments, as there are different functions that are all powered by the engine. The engine is humming as usually, and all the parts are turning and moving as they should. Nillian checks the pipes leading in and out of the engine, but they all seem to have the right temperature. Then Ned calls for breakfast, and Nillian first makes his way to the kitchen.
Lyxia is also up already, and joins Ned and Nillian for breakfast. During breakfast not much is said, as everyone is busy eating and waking up. Copper is not up yet, as he only went to sleep very late, keeping watch over the engines. After breakfast Nillian goes over to the cold store. Inside it is indeed much warmer then it should be, but he is not sure why. So he opens one of the crawling spaces, and wiggles his way inside.
In the mean time Lyxia makes her way outside, to check their heading. The sun has risen, so there are no stars to give a precise heading, but it is enough for a rough heading. Every evening she maps the precise route, based on the stars, and during the day they use the sun to keep to that course as close as possible. When she checks the heading today it seems they veered a bit of course, so she walks over to the rudder controlling the ship. The rudder itself is much too heavy for anyone to move, so an engine was installed to do it for them. But today it doesn't seem to work. It only makes a whirring sound, and the rudder itself doesn't move. With a sigh Lyxia makes her way to the engine room, to talk with Nillian.
***
Behind the walls of the cold store Nillian is trying to figure out what is going wrong with the pipes. All the pipes in his reach are warm, while at least half of them should be cold. The crawl space is aptly named, as he can just crawl and wriggle himself through the available space. Finding nothing wrong yet, he makes his way to the back of the crawl space.
There Nillian finds the problem. Some pipes there are covered with frost, and a thin white mist coming from them. One of the pipes has twisted, stopping the flow of cold air, and freezing the nearby pipes. Nillian slowly makes his way to the blocked pipe, and manages to wrench it back to its original position. With a large *pop* the pipe returns to its form, and the cold air begins to move again towards the cold room. Looking around Nillian finds a piece of wood, which probably fell and caused the pipe to twist. Looking up he can find no other loose pieces, so he considers the problem fixes. Then he realises that there is no way to turn around, so he has to crawl backwards through the crawling space...
***
In the engine room Ned is sitting in Nillian’s chair, keeping watch while Nillian is fixing the cold store. Sometimes he feels himself a 'fift wheel' on the journey, as he had nothing to do on board. It is in the forest, or in a gunfight that he was really useful. Sitting about, feeling seasick and mainly doing nothing are not his favourite pastimes. Then Lyxia enters, looking around.
"Isn't Nillian here? There is a problem with the rudder, helm I am afraid."
"Nae lass, he's fixing the cold store. He'll probably be back suin."
Before Nillian has a chance to come back though, Copper comes bustling into the engine room, having woken early. When he hears that the rudder is acting up, he follows Lyxia aft, to see what the problem is.
"Sounds like a broken belt. Will fix it immediately."
"Ah, thanks. We are slightly off course, so we need to go two points more to the east."
"Alright, I will make the change."
Copper opens the cabinet housing the machinery to the rudder, and indeed finds that one of the belts has broken. He is a bit angry about that, as belts like this should keep for years and years. A closer look of the machinery shows him that one of the gears is a little bit off, causing the belt to wobble. He immediately fixes the gear, and replaces the belt. Then he closes the housing, and turns the rudder. It slides smoothly to its new position, and the ship takes a new course.
***
In the afternoon they all join together for some entertainment. Lyxia organises such meetings, as she realised they had to spend time together in a way not busy with the boat. So she dug through the stuff everyone took along, and found some cards and tokens. So they spend a few hours every day playing cards, to relieve some of the stress. Today they are playing a variant of Tichu, and Ned is winning most of the time. After a while Coppers goes to the kitchen to prepare the evening meal, while the others continue playing.
After dinner everyone goes their own way again. Nillian and Copper go to the engine room, filling the coal pile and making sure all the boilers are hot enough. Lyxia goes outside, to check the stars and check their course. Ned remains inside, and takes out one of his guns, which en opens up and begins to clean. The evening is spent about the same way, with Nillian turning in early as he has to get up early to keep watch on the engines, and the others reading and finally also going to bed.
***
The next morning, the sixth day after they left Capes, Ned is standing at the railing. Last night the sea again became a bit rowdy, and now he is feeling his sea sickness coming up again. As he looks out over the sea, trying to calm his stomach, something draws his eye. It takes a moment for him to identify what he is looking at, but then he shouts out the call they were all waiting for.
"Lan in Sight!"
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