“Just what they have thought for a long time.”
I laughed. “How true that is, teacher!” I said.
Finding us still cheerful, the imps tried again.
“Jonathan—do you know—I do believe—my rowlock socket is working loose.”
He cast a quick look over his shoulder without breaking stroke. Then he said a few words, explicit and powerful, about the man who had “overhauled” the boat. “He ought to be put out in it, in a sea like this, and left to row himself home.”
“Yes, of course, but instead, here we are. It won’t last half an hour longer.”
It did not last ten minutes. There it hung, one screw pulled loose, the other barely holding.
“Take my knife—you can get it out of my hip pocket—and try to set up that screw with the big blade.”
I did so, and pulled a few strokes. Then—“It’s come out again. It’s no use.”
“We make blamed poor headway with one pair of oars,” said Jonathan.