“Rig the head-pump,” he said.
“Rig the head-pump, sir,” the boatswain said. “Head-pump there, two of you. Beg pardon, sir, shall we be heaving in, after washing down?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Dorney, the third mate, drove some of the boys forward with an accent from the northern midlands. “Now, choom Jellybags,” he said, “get tha boockets; and Nibs and Woolfram get tha scroobers. We want a good harbour scroob for sailing.”
Mr. Dorney was a rougher customer than the other mates, but a faultless practical seaman. He would have made a perfect boatswain. Anything to be done with hands (especially a dangerous thing) was Mr. Dorney’s delight. He had a heavy, loutish, expressionless face, which seemed to have been badly carved out of pale wood. He had only scraped through his navigation examinations after three attempts. “Ah haate all this fooss of sights,” he said. “Ah can foodge a day’s work.” In any emergency he was as swift as Sard himself, but his excellence stopped at seamanship: he was a coastwise seaman who had strayed into blue water.
In a minute or two Sard was forward with his watch, setting the pace in washing decks against the second mate. He had rolled up his trousers to the knee and worked barefooted in advance of the scrubbers, scattering sand for them to scrub with, then snatching buckets from the water-carriers to sluice the portion scrubbed. By the time his watch had worked aft to the main hatch, he was five yards ahead of the second mate. There came a hail from a water-boat going past them to the outer anchorage.
“Pathfinders ahoy!”
Sard went to the rail to take the hail. The water-boat was going dead slow, as though only half awake. She still carried her navigation lights, but men were taking them in and blowing them out as she paused to speak.
“Pathfinder ahoy!”
“Hullo, the water-boat.”