“Nay, sir; I’ll have it as we sails over, bime by. I won’t stop now. It’s a long job, and it’ll be quite dark afore I’ve done.”
He fetched the pitch kettle from the little fire a fisherman had been feeding with chips of wreck-wood and adze cuttings from a lugger on the stacks.
“Now then,” he said, after carefully stuffing the damaged hole with oakum, “this ought to keep the inside dry, on’y the worst on it is that the pitch won’t stick well to where the wood’s wet.”
“But you’re not going to pour all that in?”
“I just am,” said Tom, with a chuckle. “I arn’t going to spyle a ship for the sake of a ha’porth o’ tar. There we are,” he continued, spreading the melted pitch all over the patch with a thin piece of wood till, as it cooled, it formed a fairly level surface ready for the pieces of planking intended to form the outside skin.
Tom was a very slow worker, but very sure, and a couple more hours glided by and the sun had long set with the boat still not finished. So slow had the repairing been that at last Aleck expressed his dissatisfaction; but Tom only grinned.
“I know what water is, sir, and how it’ll get through holes. I don’t want for us to go to the bottom, no more’n I want us both to be allus baling. Didn’t I say as it would take me till dark?”
“You did, Tom, but you needn’t drive in quite so many nails. This is only temporary work.”
“Tempry or not tempry, I want it to last till we gets home.”
“Of course,” said Aleck, and to calm his impatience he turned to look at the group of fishermen, who sat and stood about, smoking away, and for the first time the lad noticed that the men had ceased to watch Tom Bodger but had their eyes fixed intently upon the sloop-of-war and the cutter, which lay at anchor a couple of miles from the harbour, and were now showing their riding lights.