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Y'see, I ain't in the minin' business," he added, by way of accounting for his lack of personal knowledge. "Ah!" said Joe. "Maybe you're 'commercial'?" Bill laughed so genially that the others joined in it. "In a ways, mebbe I am. You see, I mostly sit around, an' when anything promisin' comes along, why, I ain't above plankin' a few dollars by way of speculation." Joe grinned broadly.
Let us get away aboard at once, sir; I'm just longin' to tread the beauty's planks again; and as to scuttlin' her why, I'll make it my first business, when I get aboard, to shape out a few plugs and take 'em down into the run with me that's the only place where they'll be able to get at her under-water plankin' and as soon as they've gone I'll plug up them holes so that she'll be as tight as a bottle, and never a penny the worse for what little they're likely to do to her.
"Don't you think, Captain Witherspoon," he said, changing his tone, "that you ought to consider the matter of re-shinglin' your house? You'll have to engage men now, anyway, to do your plankin'. I know of some extra cedar shingles that were landed yesterday from somewheres up river. Or was Mis' Witherspoon a little over-anxious last season?"
"Just 'ave a look round now while things is quiet," he said, nodding to Hozier confidentially. "I'll tell you wot I fancy: a rat dragged a bit of bone into a gear-box. If the plankin' is badly worn anywhere, get the carpenter to see to it. I do 'ate to 'ave a feelin' that the wheel can let you down. S'pose we was makin' Bahia on the homeward run, an' that 'appened!
"I war 'stonished," continued the sailor, without heeding the odd interpolation of the sea-cook, "wonderful 'stonished when that flyin'-fish chucked itself aboard our bit o' plankin', an' it no bigger than the combin' o' a hatchway. What kud 'a conducted it thear, to that spot above all others o' the broad ocean? What but the hand o' that angel as sits up aloft?
We'll snip 'em off, sandpaper every spot where there's a letter, and repaint it; after which we'll rig up a stagin' over her bows and stern, and cut her new name, 'Maggie II, right into her plankin'. Nobody'll ever suspect her name's been changed. I notice that the official letters and numbers cut into her main beam is F-C-P-9957.
"Forties," answered Chukkers, biting home. The little Levantine was surprised, as those Simian eyebrows of his revealed. "Forties!" he said. "I thought he was a hundred to one." "So he were a week since," answered Chukkers surlily. "Silver's been plankin' the dollars on." "Ah, that ain't all," said Jaggers gloomily. "The Ring knows something.
After a few moments of blissful contemplation he said, with a little note of regret in his voice: "I wish you had let me know about that plankin'. I'd have liked to put a little writin' under it something sarcastic, that they could sort of meditate on when they sit there in that hole and look at each other. "It was certainly a complicated plot," he went on. "And it had to be.
Who else? 'But what for? I asks, feelin' as you might have knocked me down with a feather. 'I meant to ha' told you, says Dad, 'but it slipped my mind. 'Twas one afternoon, when you was out on your walk. I heard Master's stick tap on the plankin' overhead so I went up, thinkin' as he might be wantin' his tea in a hurry.
So I got into an old divin' dress we had aboard one we used on the Ledge oiled up the pump and went down to look her over, and by Jimmy Criminy, not a scrap o' that wreck was left 'cept the rusty iron work and that part o' the bottom plankin' of the vessel that lay under the stones! Everything else was eaten up with the worms! Funniest-lookin' place you ever see.
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