They pulled aboard the Barang, and while the boats were sent ashore to bring down all the empty drums, Bill Blunt assumed a comical air of study and thought out his plan. He first asked about the holes and what had been done with them. By this time the tide had risen a foot, and the plugs were almost ready to be driven in. Barry watched the old fellow with a grin, and when Bill began to count laboriously on his gnarled fingers, stepping from the bulwarks to the hatch and back again, peering over the side and down the hold, the skipper said with mock apology:
"I suppose you're wondering why we're going to drive in the plugs from inside, hey?"
"No, sir. I never wonders at what my skipper does. It's allus right. That's what you be skipper fer, I take it. No, sir. I sees as it ain't easy to drive plugs into holes as you can't reach, and them holes seems to be away below the mud outside. Course, some clever sharks as I knows on might say as you was wrong, and that the water outside 'ud drive them plugs back into the belly o' the wessel. But 'tain't so. No, sir." The ancient mariner maintained his bearlike pacing to and from the hatch, and his speech was astonishingly longwinded for him; still he kept on chattering, and presently Barry began to listen with real interest, and Little and Gordon, waiting for the plugs, stared at the sailor in awed admiration.
"No, sir," went on Bill, "them plugs has to be druv from inside; an' makin' free, genelmen, I'd make 'em twice as long as them you have ready."
"Twice as long?" snorted Barry. "D' you mean these are all useless?"
"P'raps not quite useless, Cap'n, but they ain't no blessed good, an' I bet my head on that. See, if you drives all them plugs well through her, and they sticks out good an' proper outside, it ain't so hard to grope around under the mud an' grab a holt on 'em. Then 'tain't very hard, genelmen, to paddle away a bit o' mud about each bunch o' plugs, an' when that's done, 'tis about all done. I'll lash a wire to them long plugs, and stretch her right along th' ship. That keeps them plugs in, don't it? an' it's some'at to hang short lines to, ain't it? Werry well then; say we has a hundred or two hundred short lines bent on to that wire, genelmen, an' on each short line is a hempty drum, bunged up tight—"
"And at dead low water next tide we fasten those drums down short, the tide 'll help raise her, hey?" finished Barry, persuaded that it might be done. "But how about the other side?"
"She don't matter, sir," the old fellow asserted. "We got plenty o' time afore next tide. Plenty o' time to cut fresh plugs an' git lines ready. Then when tide rises again, them drums 'll roll her over if they won't lift her. Ain't it easy then to get at them leaks? Better'n layin' her ashore somewheres fer caulking, if yuh don't know this yer river very well."
Barry needed but one minute to see how infinitely better was the old sailor's plan than the one he had formed himself. Merely to raise the vessel and then to lay her on the alongshore flats to stop the leaks, left a serious loophole for the swift escape of the schooner; but the simple scheme of Bill Blunt left the Barang in her blockading position until she was fit to move anywhere under her own sail power.