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While the doctors were thus differing, the practical engineers were busy making the needful preparations for picking-up an operation involving great risk of breaking the cable, and requiring the utmost delicacy of treatment, as may be easily understood, for, while the cable is being payed out the strain on it is comparatively small, whereas when it is being picked up, there is not only the extra strain caused by stoppage, and afterwards by hauling in, but there is the risk of sudden risings of the ship's stern on the ocean swell, which might at any moment snap the thin line like a piece of packthread.
These fellows who follow that racket are rather close, and don't want to tell anyone." "The other day I heard a bloke talking about a 'picking-up moll' he used to live with. What did he mean by that?" "O! that's a very common racket. Whilst the quarrel is going on the moll walks off with the booty. I know one coshman who pretends to be a missionary, and wears a white choker.
Dirt and discomfort were all very well when there was plenty of work to do, and we all decided that every officer should have been in the ranks, but despatch-riding had lost its savour. We had become postmen. Thoughts of the days when we had dashed round picking-up brigades, had put battalions on the right road, and generally made ourselves conspicuous, if not useful, discontented us.
In the mythology that he had read, dogs played a great rôle, nearly always as the enemy of man. There were Cerberus and the others, and flitting visions of them passed through his mind now. He was aware, too, that the reality was not greatly inferior to his fancies. The dogs could follow them anywhere, and the accidental picking-up of their trail might destroy them all.
There is great pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day, and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil. Life has few such moments. But then they must be picked up. The picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it. I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardening pay?
About eight o'clock in the morning of 2nd August another bad fault was reported, and they had once again to resort to the wearisome process of picking-up. At first all seemed about to go well. A gale was indeed blowing at the time, but that did not much affect the colossal ship. The cable was cut, fastened to its iron rope, passed to the bow, and got in over the pulleys.
I fear it may be cited against my view of practice cruises, as proving that systematic training is better than picking-up; to which my reply would be that the picking-up showed aptitude or the reverse if only some means could be devised of making it tell in selection, as it assuredly did in character. But at the beginning, despite any little previous inklings, we were all quite green.
The picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it. I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardening pay? It is so difficult to define what is meant by paying.
Curiously enough, the anchor happened to hook, and so discover the cable, which was thereupon grappled, cut, and the sea end brought on board over the bow sheave. After being passed six times round the picking-up drum it was led into the hold, and the Elba slowly forged ahead, hauling in the cable from the bottom as she proceeded.
They had scarcely begun to breathe freely again, and to congratulate each other on being able to continue the voyage, when they received another shock of alarm by the cable suddenly flying off the drum, while it was being transferred from the picking-up machinery in the bow to the paying-out arrangements in the stern.
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