“You must thank this man, President, not me, for he was my engineer-in-chief. Weren’t you, Chips?”
“Ah, my friend,” cried the Spaniard, “some day, when I get my own, believe me that I will pay you for all that you have done.”
“Oh, it’s all right, sir. Don’t you worry about that. ’Course you see it warn’t much of a job.”
He took off his straw hat and wiped the great drops from his sun-browned brow with the back of his hand.
“You see, sir, it was like this ’ere. The skipper he puts me on the job, and ‘Chips,’ he says, ‘make the best of it you can by way of offence.’ ‘Niver another word, sir,’ and off he goes, and here was I when the young gents come up, all of a wax; warn’t I, Mr Poole, sir? I put it to you, sir. ‘Look here, sir,’ I says, ‘the skipper’s put me on this ’ere job with my kit of tools left aboard the schooner, and not a bit of stuff.’ Didn’t I, sir? Speak out straight, sir. I only asks for the truth.”
“You did, Chips,” said Poole solemnly, and setting his teeth as he spoke; “didn’t he, Burnett?”
“Oh yes,” replied the middy, “he did say something like that,” and then as he caught Poole’s eye he had to turn his back, looking out through the slit in the window and biting his tongue hard the while, while he heard the carpenter maunder on to the President something more about not having a bit of stuff, and every nail to straighten before he could drive it in again.
“Yes, that’s right. Winks,” said the skipper, bringing the speech to an end, and not before it was time, for the carpenter was beginning to repeat himself again and again. “You did splendidly, and if we had a few hundred feet of battens and boards, we could hold this place for a month.—Well, President,” he continued, turning his back on his man, who sighed with relief and whispered to Fitz that that was a good job done, “and after we’ve driven them back again?”
“Ah! After! Treachery, fire, powder to blow us up! The fighting of cowards. But with your help, my brave, as soon as they are cowering among the trees we must attack in turn.”
“No, President,” said the skipper, laying his hand upon the other’s shoulders; “you are too brave and rash. This is your last stronghold, is it not?”