“He’d bow all right,” said the Donkey Engine, “but he wouldn’t ank. Result is he’s been put in chains.”
“Serves him right,” said the Bilge Stringer, filling his pipe with Findlayson’s tooth-powder. “Serves him right. He ought to be chucked overboard.”
“True,” said the Donkey Engine. “An anchor can’t be made to ank unless you chuck him overboard.”
The company roared at this, but Findlayson never cracked a smile.
“That is very true,” he said. “In fact, how could an anchor ank, as you put it, without being lowered into the sea?”
“It’s a bad case,” observed Bulwark Plate, in a whisper, to the Upper Deck Plank.
“It floors me,” said the Plank. “I don’t think he’d laugh if his uncle died and left him a million.”
“Shut up,” said the Donkey Engine. “We’ve got to do it or bust. Let’s try again.”
Then he added, aloud,
“Say, Technicalities, did you ever hear that riddle of the Starboard Coal Bunker’s?”