“I’ll answer for mine,” said the boatswain, “but I won’t say nothing for Chips here. He aren’t much account unless it’s hammers and spikes, or a job at caulking or using his adze.”
“That’s right,” said Chips, “but you might tell the young gents that I’m handiest with a pot o’ glue.”
There was silence for a few moments, and then Fitz said—
“It’s almost too much to expect that both things have turned out all right; but I can’t help believing they have.”
“Well, sir,” said the boatswain, “I do hope as that there cable is not all twisted up in a bunch about them fans—reg’lar wound up tight—and if it is there’s no knowing where that there gunboat will drift during the night; for I don’t care how big a crew they’ve got aboard, they can’t free that there propeller till daylight, if they do then. But it do seem a pity to spoil a beautiful new soft bit of stuff like that, for it’ll never be no good again.”
“Fine tackle for caulking,” said the carpenter, “or making ships’ fenders.”
“Yah!” cried the boatswain. “We should never get it again. It’s gone, and it give me quite a heartache to use up new ship’s stores like that. But what I was going to say was, that the skipper will be saddersfied enough when we get back and tell him that Mr Burnett’s crippled the big gun.”
“Oh, but that was the easy job,” said Fitz. “It was just play, lifting out that block and dropping it overboard.”
“And a very pretty game too, Mr Burnett, sir,” said the boatswain, chuckling. “But I say, seems quite to freshen a man up to be able to open his mouth and speak. While you two young gents was swarming up that anchor, and all the time you was aboard till you come back plish, plosh, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I say, Mr Poole, would you like to take these ’ere lines?”
“No,” said Poole shortly; “I want to get dry. But why do you want me to take the lines?”