Let me interpolate now Mr. Harman’s part of the story in his own words.
“When Cap Ginnell bottled me and Blood in the cabin of the Heart of Ireland,” said he, “we did a bit of shoutin’ and then fell quiet. There ain’t no use in shoutin’ against a two-inch thick cabin hatch overlaid with iron platin’. He’d made that hatch on purpose for the bottling of parties; must have, by the way it worked and by the armamints on it.
“You may say we were mugs to let ourselves be bottled like that. We were. Y’ see, we hadn’t thought it over. We hadn’t thought it would pay Ginnell to abandon the Heart for a derelick schooner better found and up to her hatches with a cargo of champagne, or we wouldn’t have let him fool us down into the cabin like we did and then clap the hatch on us. Leavin’ alone the better exchange, we hadn’t thought it would be nuts to him to do us in the eye. Mugs we were, and mugs we found ourselves, sittin’ on the cabin table and listenin’ to the blighter clearin’ the crew off. There weren’t no chance of any help from them. Chows they were, carin’ for nothin’ s’long as their chests an’ opium pipes was safe.
“The skylight overhead was no use for more’n a cat to crawl through, if it’d been open, which it wasn’t, more’n an inch, and fastened from the deck side. Portholes! God bless you, them scuttles wasn’t big enough for a cat’s face to fit in.
“I says to Blood: ‘Listen to the blighters! Oh, say, can’t we do nuthin’, sittin’ here on our beam ends? Ain’t you got nuthin’ in your head? Ain’t you got a match in your pocket to fire the tub and be done with it?’
“‘It’ll be lucky for us,’ says Blood, ‘if Cap Ginnell doesn’t fire her before he leaves her.’ With that, I didn’t think anythin’ more about matches. No, sir! For ha’f an hour after the last boatload of Chows and their dunnage was off the ship and away I was sniffin’ like a dog at the hatch cover for the smell of smoke, and prayin’ to the A’mighty between sniffs.
“After that we rousted round to see how we were fixed up for provisions and water. We found grub enough for a month, and in one of the bunks a breaker ha’f filled with water. Now that breaker must have been put there for us by Ginnell before we left the Heart to ’xamine the derelick schooner. He must have fixed in his mind to do us in and change ship right from the first. I remarks on this to Blood, and then we starts a hunt for tools to cut our way out of there, findin’ nuthin’ serviceable but cutlery ware an’ a corkscrew. Two prong forks and knives wore thin with usin’ weren’t what we were searchin’ for; a burglar’s jimmy, blastin’ powder, and a drill was more in our line, but there weren’t any, so we just set to with the knives, cuttin’ and scrubbin’ at the tender parts of the hatch, more like tryin’ to tickle a girl with iron stays on her than any useful work, for the plates on that hatch would ’a’ given sniff to the plates on a battleship, till I give over and just sat down on the floor cursin’ Schwab and the Steel Trusts and Carnegie and Ginnell and the chap that had forged them plates from the tip of his hammer to the toe of his boots. ‘Oh, why the blazes,’ says I, ‘weren’t we born rats! There’s some sense in rats; rats would be out and on deck, while here’s two chaps with five fingers on each fist and men’s brains in their heads bottled and done for, scratchin’ like blind kittens shet up in a box, and all along of puttin’ their trust in a swab they ought to have scragged when they had the chanst.’
“‘Oh, shet your head!’ says Blood.
“‘Shet yours,’ says I. ‘I’m speakin’ for both of us; it’s joining in with that skrimshanker’s done us. Bad comp’ny, neither more nor neither less, and I’m blowed if I don’t quit such and their likes and turn Baptis’ minister if I ever lay leg ashore again.’ Yes, that’s what I says to Cap Blood; I was that het up I laid for everythin’ in sight. Then I goes on at him for the little we’d done, forgettin’ it was the tools were at fault. ‘What’s the use,’ says I, ‘tinkerin’ away at that hatch? You might as well be puttin’ a blister on a bald head, hopin’ to raise hair. Here we are, and here we stick,’ I says, ‘till Providence lets us out.’