“Who asked you to come into this?” said he.
“A chap named Shiner,” replied Harman.
“A Jew?”
“A German. I don’t know whether he is a Jew or not, but he’s got the splosh.”
“Look here,” said the Captain, half resuming his place on the mooring bitt with one leg dangling, “let’s come to common sense. To begin with, you can’t run a cable boat with a skipper and a mate and even a couple of engineers alone. You want an electrician. Where’s your electrician to come from?”
“You don’t want no electricians to cut cables with,” said Harman.
“That’s true,” said the Captain, falling into meditation.
“Yet, all the same,” went on Harman, “this chap Shiner said we would want an electrician, and that he’d come as electrician himself. Says he has a good knowledge of the work.”
“Oh, he said that, did he?”