"No; nor ashore, either—why don't you stop that hole yourself? You're big enough and ugly enough to stop a clock," she snapped.
"Thanks!" I answered, and strode away with the kindest feelings imaginable for our stewardess.
But strange as it may seem, that remark was what did the business. I would stop that hole if I had to be keelhauled myself to do it. What! Lay the ship up a day or two while that lady sat around in white duck and looked out dreamily over that beautiful harbor? Not if I knew myself. I'd see that the ship got away and hoped she would carry at least two ugly and indignant aged ladies who could and would make life a happy dream for that stewardess.
I went back aboard with the report that there was not a diver this side of hell, and that if the ship would stand the expense of my funeral I would at least try to pass the bolts for the man from Donegal to screw fast.
"Sink a donkey man, anyhow!" I swore, "why don't the company get engineers enough to run a ship properly?"
"Why, indeed?" smiled Bill Boldwin.
I turned to the men I needed, and with that bos'n to give them advice with those flippers of his, I peeled off and made ready for the work. The engine-room force had taken off the pipe and bolted a new flange to it, a strong job and proper. The affair was all ready to ship just as soon as we dared pull the wad of stuffing away and set it up. A frame had been rigged in the room to steady the affair, and the bolt holes had been reamed out as much as they would stand. A deck pump kept the water from the vicinity, the water that still leaked in around the bolt holes.
It was necessary to get the wad of stuff away from the bolt holes in the flanges, for it spread out so that it made passing of bolts from the outside impossible. The pressure upon it from the water under the ship at the depth of fifteen feet was great, and I was supposed to get a line to it so that it might be pulled away by the men on deck after we slacked away the three-inch line by which we had hauled it into the breach. The pipe was set up true over the opening, the holes lined up, a few bolts inserted point downward to steady it, and all was ready for the man outside to get the blamed wad away and pass the bolts upward so that their threads would appear through the flange. I went on deck and gazed down over the side at the warm blue depths.
"Strange that the mate has to do the dog's work," I said to Mac, who was waiting and watching.
I had a line rigged under the bilge by passing it under the bows and drifting it aft until it came right on the line of the hole. It was slack enough to allow a handhold, so that I could pull myself down quickly and then let go as I pushed in a bolt.