Jackman and Barret came on deck at the moment, closely followed by Quin, who, quietly ignoring the owner of the yacht, went up to his master and said—
“Tay’s riddy, sor.”
“Breakfast, you mean,” said Mabberly, with a smile.
“Sure I wouldn’t conterdick—ye, sor, av ye was to call it supper—but it was tay that I put in the pot.”
At breakfast the conversation somehow turned upon boats—ship’s boats—and their construction.
“It is quite disgraceful,” said Jackman, “the way in which Government neglects that matter of boats. Some things, we know, will never be generally adopted unless men are compelled to adopt them. Another biscuit, Barret.”
“Instance something, Giles,” said Mabberly, “and pass the butter. I hate to hear sweeping assertions of an indefinite nature, which no one can either corroborate or confute.”
“Well, there is the matter of lowering boats into the water from a ship’s davits. Now, I’ll be bound that the apparatus for lowering your little punt astern is the ordinary couple of blocks—one at the stem, the other at the stern?”
“Of course it is. What then?”
“Why, then, don’t you know what would happen if you were lowering that boat full of people in a rough sea, and the man at the bow failed to unhook his block at the exact same moment as the man at the stern?”