“Well, your honour,” said Ben, “all that can be said lies in a nut-shell! She’s making water as fast as it can pour in; and if we don’t find the leak and stop it, she’ll founder pretty soon.”
“Have you any idea where it is coming in?” inquired Mr Meldrum.
“Well, sir, the cap’en say it’s by the rudder-post; but I myself thinks it’s amidships or else forrud: I’d have looked, but I couldn’t shift the cargo without help.”
“This must be seen to at once, Captain Dinks,” said Mr Meldrum. “As you have asked my aid, I would advise your calling the watch below; and I’ll go down with the carpenter and see whether we can spy out the leak.”
“Oh, by all means, if you think that will do any good, although I’m of the opinion that the leak is in the stern. McCarthy, call the port watch up to go below and break cargo!”
“All hands, ahoy!”
This cry soon brought up the weary sailors, who had only just retired after more than twenty hours of duty, before they had had time to close their eyes in their first sleep, but they came out of the forecastle willingly enough, well knowing the peril the ship was in; and, down below the main-hatch they bumbled after Mr Meldrum and the carpenter, glad that it was not for another spell of pumping for which they had been called up.
Ben Boltrope was found to be right. After tossing to one side the bales and boxes and heavy masses of iron that filled the midship section of the hold, they found a great gap between the timbers through which the water was spouting in at the rate of some hundred gallons an hour—the cause of the hole being apparent enough in a long iron girder which had got jammed against the side of the ship, end outwards, and in the working of the ship had made its way clean through the strakes and planking—just as if it had been an auger, the hole had been bored so round and neat!
This orifice was now carefully plugged and battened over; and when the pumps were again rigged and the vessel cleared it was found that she had ceased to make water to any appreciable extent.
“Thank God for that!” said Captain Dinks heartily. “I own I was wrong, for I was certain that the rudder-post was the seat of mischief:— the ship was bound to leak there!”