“I’ve told ye. There was six feet or more there, wi’ Calder’s cap floatin’ on top.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Weel, in the confusion o’ things after the propeller had dropped off an’ the engines were racin’ an’ a’, it’s vara possible that Calder might ha’ lost it off his head an’ no troubled himself to pick it up again. I remember seem’ that cap on him at Southampton.”
“I don’t want to know about the cap. I’m asking where the water came from and what it was doing there, and why you were so certain that it wasn’t a leak, McPhee?”
“For good reason—for good an’ sufficient reason.”
“Give it to me, then.”
“Weel, it’s a reason that does not properly concern myself only. To be preceese, I’m of opinion that it was due, the watter, in part to an error o’ judgment in another man. We can a’ mak’ mistakes.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon?”
“I got me to the rail again, an’, ‘What’s wrang?’ said Bell, hailin’.
“‘She’ll do,’ I said. ‘Send’s o’er a hawser, an’ a man to steer. I’ll pull him in by the life-line.’