He sang the praises of sail without ceasing. And even so did Ferguson wax lyrical on the theme of the engines of the “Gairloch.”
She might not, he admitted, be beautiful externally; but, man, she’d gran’ guts in her! He would then soar into ecstatic and highly technical rhapsodies concerning those same internal essentials, the technicalities being further complicated by a copious use of his native Doric, and decorated freely with a certain adjective of a sanguinary nature of which he was inordinately fond.
The argument began something after this fashion:
The “Gairloch” had not long cleared Victoria Harbour, and was belching forth an Acheronian smudge from her shabby funnel, as she butted her ugly hull into the south-westerly swell, when she met a big four-masted barque coming in to Hastings Mill for a cargo of Pacific Coast lumber. It was a glorious morning—one of those bright, calm, virginal mornings that are an especial climatic product of that coast. Everything was bathed in a flood of clear, pale sunlight. The opaque green waters of the Strait gleamed and flashed in the sun, and, clear-cut as if they were no more than a dozen miles away, the snowy summits of the Oregon ranges stood out dazzling in their whiteness against the blue of the early morning sky.
The barque was a tall ship for those days, with royals at fore, main, and mizen, and her piled-up sails shone white as the distant ranges in the sunlight that caressed their swelling surfaces. The hands were just laying aloft to get the canvas off her, and as she surged by with a bone in her mouth, her wet bows and white figurehead flashing as she lifted on the swell, Kavanagh’s heart ached anew with an unquenchable longing for sail. In his mind he followed the noble ship to her moorings, in fancy heard the familiar nasal chant as sail after sail was furled:
“We’ll roll up the bunt with a fling—o—oh ...
An’ pa—ay Paddy Doyle for his bo—o—ots....”
“There’s a ship for you!” he exclaimed to the wide world.
“Ah see nae beauty in yon,” came a dour voice at his elbow—the voice of Ferguson. “Ah see nae beauty in thae bluidy windbags, nae mair than in ma wife’s cla’es hingin’ oot on the cla’es-line o’ a Monday morning.”
Kavanagh was annoyed. He had not meant his involuntary outburst of feeling to be overheard—least of all to be overheard by Ferguson. Sneaking about in carpet slippers....
“I dare say this floating abomination is more to your taste,” he snapped.