But Cairns had reassured them, and, as it were, thrown them into Emmie’s arms.
“My lads,” said Cairns, “don’t you worry about her being a woman. Take it from me, she has more grit than half a dozen ordinary men.”
Now they were beginning to think that Cairns was right.
Truly she was wonderful, ducking under a wet hawser that caught one of her partners as the boat approached the wharf alongside which lay Marian II., climbing slippery steps, and crossing a rickety gangway to get on board. Yet it would have been impossible to imagine anybody who appeared more incongruous to the business and the scene. In the bright cold sunshine the ship seemed a melancholy ruin, full of rust and grime, with the air of forlorn abandonment proper to a thing created for men’s use but deserted by all mankind; and Emmie, dressed in her fur coat, with her veil neatly tied under her narrow chin and her chamois leather gloves being blackened by each bit of wood or metal that they touched, was like a lady going over a house that she thinks of taking for a term of years. As she walked about with Cairns and the caretaker, now on the rusting decks, now in the gloomy depths, she asked a multitude of questions, all charmingly unprofessional and yet all full of common-sense.
“Can the machinery be put in working order? Are there no leaks? Is she sound, Captain Cairns? I think nothing of appearances—no one cares now;—but is she really watertight and seaworthy?”
“Yes, miss,” said Captain Cairns. “The three ships are all right. You may take my word for it.”
“But this is the best of the three, isn’t she?”
“Yes, I think she is. She’s the best-looking, anyhow.”
Nothing tired Miss Verinder, and she took nothing for granted. Although they were only concerned with the Marian II., she insisted on being rowed up the river a little further, to see the other two steamers that belonged to the same owner. One of these, the Osprey, was out in the stream, black and forbidding, with the water racing past the faded paint beneath her load-line. The third one, the Anemone, was literally on the mud.
“Is her back broken?” asked Emmie.