"That's the blamed Siwash's fault!" he muttered. "I couldn't get him to back up when I put the last spike in."
"Hadn't you better tell him to come out?" Carroll suggested.
"No!" thundered Vane. "If he hasn't sense enough to see that he isn't wanted, he can stay where he is all night! Are you going to get supper, or must I do that, too?"
Carroll merely smiled and set about preparing the meal, which the two Siwash partook of and afterward departed with some paper currency. Then Vane, walking down the beach, came back with the plank. Lighting his pipe, he pointed to one or two broken nails in it. The water was now rippling softly about the sloop, and the splash of canoe paddles came up out of the distance in rhythmic cadence.
"That's the cause of the trouble," he explained. "It cost me a week's journey to get the package of galvanized spikes—I could have managed to split a plank or two out of one of these firs. The storekeeper fellow assured me they were specially annealed for heading up. If I knew who the manufacturers were, I'd have pleasure in telling them what I think of them. If they set up to make spikes, they ought to make them, and empty every keg that won't stand the test out on to the scrap-heap."
Carroll smiled. The course his partner had indicated was the one he would have adopted. He was characterized by a somewhat grim idea of efficiency, and never spared his labor to attain it, though the latter fact now and then had its inconveniences for those who cooperated with him, as Carroll had discovered. The latter had no doubt that Vane would put the planks in, if he spent a month over the operation.
"I wouldn't have had this trouble if you'd been handier with tools," Vane went on. "I can't see why you never took the trouble to learn how to use them."
"My abilities aren't as varied as yours; and the thing strikes me as bad economy," Carroll replied. "Skill of the kind you mention is worth about three dollars a day."
"You were getting two dollars for shoveling in a mining ditch when I first met you."
"I was," Carroll assented good-humoredly. "I believe another month or two of it would have worn me out. It's considerably pleasanter and more profitable to act as your understudy; but a fairly proficient carpenter might have bungled the matter."