“Well, we’ll have to make the mop do. Now go and fetch a bucket of water.”
“Ain’t enough on board for swillin’.”
“There’s enough in the sea. We must make it do. Go on and don’t stand there scratching your head.”
Hank, leaving George at the wheel and coming down half an hour later to see what was going on, returned jubilant.
“She’s working that gink like a house maid, he’s washed the table an’s scrubbing the floor and she’s stripping the blankets off the bunks. She’s going to make him wash them. She’s a peach.”
The tin box with the ship’s money, some thousand dollars, and the log lay on the deck. He placed them on one side and then stood erect and walked to the rail. He gazed aft at the far-away shore as if visualising something there.
“Bud.”
“Yep?”
“Nothing’s ever got me like she has, right by the neck. I reckon it’s a punishment on me for having invented rat traps.”
“Oh, don’t be an ass.”