CHAPTER II
THE PIRATE CREW SIGN ON
ON the following day, Mr. Chamfer, the Admiralty inspector, arrived.
He was a short, slim-built man with a totally disproportionate sense of his own importance. Thirty years of Civil Service life had got him into a rut. It mattered little how he performed his duties as long as he did them somehow; a monthly visit to the cashier's office at Devonport Dockyard to draw his salary was an assured thing. At the end of every year his salary was subject to a fixed increase. Whether he earned it or not, whether he possessed higher or lower qualifications than his confrères mattered not at all—the annual "rise" came with unfailing certainty. Mr. Chamfer was a firm believer in the principle of following the line of least resistance, namely, to get through his perfunctory duties with the minimum of trouble. Provided he was treated with due deference to his position by the principals of the various shipbreaking firms with whom he had to deal, the former had no cause to complain of irritating demands on the part of the Admiralty inspector.
"Ah, good morning, Mr. Trevorrick!" he exclaimed. "Fine morning. Business going strong, I hope? Let me see: R 81 arrived here this week. Started on her yet?"
"No, sir," replied Trevorrick, with his tongue in his cheek. "We're engaging ten additional hands for that job. Next time you pay us a visit you'll find that there's not very much left of her."
"And R 67?" inquired Mr. Chamfer, consulting an official form.
"She's practically demolished," was the reply. "Do you wish to make an inspection?"
The inspector gave a quick glance out of the office window. Eighty yards away lay the object under discussion, the gaunt skeleton of a mammoth, the steel ribs of which were being attacked by a swarm of workmen, who gave the onlooker the impression that they were Lilliputians clambering over Gulliver's recumbent form.