"'You had better get home at once and have a rub down and change and sixpenn'orth or more, hot. I know what to do, and will see all is put right.' He took the hint and skipped, but came back in half an hour, and then we had a talk.'
"I tell you what it is, one can play a lot of tricks on land, and get 'extras' many roads, but water won't stand it. It is too honest, and turns upon you and soon finds you out. I never did like water much, you can't beat it, that's why I left the sea. It's an unsociable element, and is most always in the way except when you're boating, washing, fishing, or mixing something. You can't educate it so as to look at work from an 'extras' point of view, for it cares for no one.
"Take my advice and always give it a margin and allow in temporary structures a good 3 feet above the highest recorded water line, unless you want the work wrecked, and then add a height necessary to keep out the waves."
"You are right, for I remember getting a bit 'extra' out of some pipe joints. Instead of making all the joints according to the specification, we made a good many with brown paper and covered them up quickly. The pipes were laid at a depth of some 20 feet, and it took a considerable time before they began to leak. At last there was a burst up, but it was so powerful that all the jointing was washed out, so they never knew who was to blame. The place where that happened is fully a couple of hundred miles away, and will never see me in it again as I did not like the people, so I said to myself, all right, I will leave something behind that will tickle you up, and cost the lot of you some beans to put right, and I did, and so got even with them all. It was one of those lovely small towns where everyone knew everybody's business much better than their own."
"Do you remember Carotty Jack?"
"Yes, rather. You mean him who was up to snuff in spoon-bag dredging. 'Old tenpenny labor' only was his 'chaff' name."
"He was the sharpest card, so I was told, on the river for getting 'extras' out of dredging. He was measured by the barge, and paid accordingly. I confess I don't quite know how he worked it, but he did for years, and never got found out. You see, what is ten or twenty yards of dredging, nothing either way? It is never noticed, and you can't measure under the water as you can on land. It can't be done, except in new cuts, when new cross-sections have been taken over the ground. The beds of most rivers being always more or less on the move, water then becomes a nice servant to work a bit of 'extras' out of, and that is about the only way I am aware of where it comes in useful in that direction.
"How Carotty did it, as I said before, I don't quite know, although I saw the thing, but he used to work it somehow or other by movable boards fixed on a pivot. He had three or four of them, and could fit them together just about as quick as the roulette tables are fastened by racecourse thieves and stowed away. They had two flaps at the sides covered with stiff tarpaulin, and the ends were closed by planks loosely fastened by a catch to the pivot. They were well made and fitted splendidly, just like hinged box-lids, and the whole thing was similar to a box with the bottom out and the sides hinged and ends to slide up and down. I believe Carotty would have made furniture A 1, if he had turned his attention to it.
"He had an old ship's boat of his own. The apparatus was stowed away in it, and I might further say it resembled a shallow box upside down, with the lid off, working on a saddle, and the flaps at the sides moved as the box got pushed down on either side; but they kept the stuff from getting under it almost always; for when they measured the barge-load for depth, if they put the measuring-rod down on one side and touched the board, it went up a foot or so on the other, and no one suspected anything. The barges were all narrow ones, as usual with spoon-bag dredging. The measurer used to walk round the barge and be busy trying the stuff here and there, to see if there was no gammon. The mud was thick, and went up and down very slowly. Carotty always had two or three of these boxes fixed on the saddle, and just the right distance to be out of reach, and he did not fix them on the same line. He kept the frames two or three feet apart, so that if by any chance two men started probing on the same line he would soon shift them a little, and say it was an odd brick, or a tin, or a bottle, and then everything went down easily upon both sides, and for one place where they were extra sharp, he made the machinery in very short lengths, and zigzag fashion. He told me he got pretty nearly from six to ten yards extra out of every barge, according as the stuff and the size of the barge was kind towards 'extras.' Of course, from the solid dredging he had the best haul. Carotty was a cool card at the game of 'extras,' and had a face on him like a nun, and could look that innocent and lamb-like as only humbugs can. He used to laugh over it.
"He told me that he had known the time when no 'extra' machinery such as his was needed, for plenty of water, some boxes, a false bottom, and a few planks, were all the things that were wanted. Then they had to be given up, and he said he was really compelled to make himself a present of the first small pump he could privately annex, and soon found the chance on one of the works where he had a little contract.