“‘She’ll be makin’ Smerwick,’ says Bell.
“‘She’d ha’ tried for Ventry by noo if she meant that,’ I said.
“‘They’ll roll the funnel oot o’ her, this gait,’ says Bell. ‘Why canna Bannister keep her head to sea?’
“It’s the tail-shaft. Ony rollin’s better than pitchin’ wi’ superfeecial cracks in the tail-shaft. Calder knows that much,’ I said.
“‘It’s ill wark retreevin’ steamers this weather,’ said Bell. His beard and whiskers were frozen to his oilskin, an’ the spray was white on the weather side of him. Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather!
“One by one the sea raxed away our three boats, an’ the davits were crumpled like ram’s horns.
“‘Yon’s bad,’ said Bell, at the last. ‘Ye canna pass a hawser wi’oot a boat.’ Bell was a vara judeecious man—for an Aberdonian.
“I’m not one that fashes himself for eventualities outside the engine-room, so I e’en slipped down betwixt waves to see how the Kite fared. Man, she’s the best geared boat of her class that ever left Clyde! Kinloch, my second, knew her as well as I did. I found him dryin’ his socks on the main-steam, an’ combin’ his whiskers wi’ the comb Janet gied me last year, for the warld an’ a’ as though we were in port. I tried the feed, speered into the stoke-hole, thumbed all bearin’s, spat on the thrust for luck, gied ’em my blessin’, an’ took Kinloch’s socks before I went up to the bridge again.
“Then Bell handed me the wheel, an’ went below to warm himself. When he came up my gloves were frozen to the spokes an’ the ice clicked over my eyelids. Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather, as I was sayin’.
“The gale blew out by night, but we lay in smotherin’ cross-seas that made the auld Kite chatter from stem to stern. I slowed to thirty-four, I mind—no, thirty-seven. There was a long swell the morn, an’ the Grotkau was headin’ into it west awa’.