“Look here, Davy,” said Malcolm, turning sharp upon him, “can you swim?”
“Ay can I, sir,—weel that,” answered Davy.
“Jump overboard then, and swim ashore,” said Malcolm, pointing to the Chelsea bank.
The boy made two strides to the larboard gunwale, and would have been over the next instant, but Malcolm caught him by the shoulder.
“That’ll do, Davy; I’ll give you a chance, Davy,” he said, “and if I get a good account of you from Travers, I’ll rig you out like myself here.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Davy. “I s’ du what I can to please ye, sir. An’ gien ye wad sen’ my wauges hame to my mither, sir, ye wad ken ’at I cudna be gauin’ stravaguin’, and drinkin’ whan yer back was turn’t.”
“Well, I’ll write to your mother, and see what she says,” said Malcolm. “Now I want to tell you, both of you, that this yacht belongs to the Marchioness of Lossie, and I have the command of her, and I must have everything on board ship-shape, and as clean, Travers, as if she were a seventy-four. If there’s the head of a nail visible, it must be as bright as silver. And everything must be at the word. The least hesitation, and I have done with that man. If Davy here had grumbled one mouthful, even on his way overboard, I wouldn’t have kept him.”
He then arranged that Travers was to go home that night, and bring with him the next morning an old carpenter friend of his. He would himself be down by seven o’clock to set him to work.
The result was that, before a fortnight was over, he had the cabin thoroughly fitted up, with all the luxuries it had formerly possessed, and as many more as he could think of—to compensate for the loss of the space occupied by the daintiest little stateroom —a very jewel box for softness and richness and comfort. In the cabin, amongst the rest of his additions, he had fixed in a corner a set of tiny bookshelves, and filled them with what books he knew his sister liked, and some that he liked for her. It was not probable she would read in them much, he said to himself, but they wouldn’t make the boat heel, and who could tell when a drop of celestial nepenthe might ooze from one or another of them! So there they stood, in their lovely colours, of morocco, russia, calf or vellum —types of the infinite rest in the midst of the ever restless— the types for ever tossed, but the rest remaining.
By that time also he had arranged with Travers and Davy a code of signals.