“We must go an’ look for it. There isn’t another.”
“Not me,” said Pyecroft from his seat. “Out pinnace, Hinch, an’ creep for it. It won’t be more than five miles back.”
The two men, with bowed heads, moved up the road.
“Look like etymologists, don’t they? Does she decant her innards often, so to speak?” Pyecroft asked.
I told him the true tale of a race-full of ball bearings strewn four miles along a Hampshire road, and by me recovered in detail. He was profoundly touched.
“Poor Hinch! Poor—poor Hinch!” he said. “And that’s only one of her little games, is it? He’ll be homesick for the Navy by night.”
When the search-party doubled back with the missing screw, it was Hinchcliffe who replaced it in less than five minutes, while my engineer looked on admiringly.
“Your boiler’s only seated on four little paperclips,” he said, crawling from beneath her. “She’s a wicker-willow lunch-basket below. She’s a runnin’ miracle. Have you had this combustible spirit-lamp long?”
I told him.
“And yet you were afraid to come into the Nightmare’s engine-room when we were runnin’ trials!”