"It don't make any difference to me whose care she is in. I won't go out with a man who don't know any more about handling a boat than you do, Captain Vesey," replied Mr. Button warmly. "It was only by a miracle that we got over here at all. I expected to go to the bottom every minute of the time until we got inside of the breakwater."
"I reckon I know how to handle a steamboat as well as the next man," returned Captain Vesey indignantly.
"That depends upon how much the next man knows about a tug-boat. If the next man don't know any more about it than you do, I don't want to run the engine for him."
Pearl could not help being on the engineer's side of the controversy. He and Dory had agreed that the captain of the Missisquoi did not understand his business. But Pearl Hawlinshed believed that he knew all about a steamer, and all about the lake. He considered himself competent to command one of the large steamers.
"I am going with you, Mr. Button, and it will be five dollars in your pocket, as well as the captain's," interposed Pearl, who was disposed to be liberal with the landlord's money.
"My life is worth something to me; or at any rate it is to my family," replied Mr. Button doubtfully. "Do you know about handling such a boat as this?"
"I know all about it: I used to sail in the Au Sable," replied Pearl confidently.
Mr. Button was doubtless a good engineer, but he was not a very shrewd man. If he had been, he would have asked in what capacity the applicant for the use of the Missisquoi served on board of the Au Sable. Possibly Pearl would have evaded the question, or lied about the matter, for he had simply been a waiter in the cabin for a few weeks. But Pearl thought he knew all about a steamer, and all about the navigation of the lake.
"If you are a steamboat man I have no objection to taking the boat out," added the engineer. "It is a very rough day on the lake, and one has to know something about handling a boat in such big waves."
"But I am the captain of this boat, and I reckon I don't want any boss over me," interposed Captain Vesey at this point.