“Swab,” said Hank.
Then they put on the overalls. Hank started his cleaning up with an axe. There was an axe lying in the starboard scuppers, and, seizing it, he made for the old dinghy.
“Go hunt for a mop,” he cried to the other. “I saw one down below. Can’t dump this old bath tub into the harbour as she is or there’ll be trouble. B’sides I want exercise.”
He began to set the rotten planks flying with the axe, whilst George fetched the mop, also a bucket, which, under the direction of the perspiring Hank, he fastened to a rope so that they could dip up water for deck swilling. The remains of the dinghy overboard, they turned to on the raffle; rope ends, dead and done blocks, old newspapers, bits of coal.
“Why, look you here,” said Hank, holding up one of the blocks, “look at the size of it. It must have belonged to a three-master as old as the ark. That guy’s been hunting the wharves for old raffle to dump aboard her and make a litter; stick it in the sail room for evidence if he starts any law bother. Now, gimme that bucket.”
The swilling and swabbing of the deck began and continued till the dowels showed up in the planking. Then they rested and smoked cigarettes. It was now noon, and George, as he sat on the coaming of the cabin skylight, resting and watching the planking dry in the sun, felt uplifted. Since leaving the army he hadn’t done a hand’s turn of honest work, simply because he could not find any work to do. There are a surprising number of rich people out of work owing to no fault of their own, unemployed men and women with big bank balances starving for employment. The war was a simple Godsend to these. It supplied them with a reason and an initiative. Hank had supplied George with both these things.
Then, now that the decks were cleared up, the Wear Jack began to speak to him as only a ship can speak to a man. She was no longer a dirty hulk but a live thing awakening from sleep, a thing with the mobility of a bird, a sister of the sea and the wind. He had been on many a yacht and many a steamboat as guest or passenger, but this was the first ship he had ever got close to. The work with the mop and bucket, the knowledge that he would soon be helping to rig her and handle her, the sight of her now that she was cleaning up, the very smell of her, all combined to work the charm. He went below to heave the old block into the sail room and when he came on deck again Hank was up like a cat in the rigging, hunting for rotten ratlines, a knife between his teeth.
At one o’clock Farintosh appeared with the sandwiches; at five o’clock they knocked off. They had cleared and cleaned the deck, made an overhaul of the rigging, cleared and cleaned the cabin, and cleaned the bathroom and lavatory.
“I’ll start on the rigging to-morrow,” said Hank. “It’s all sound but a few ropes and ratlines—Christopher!”