Paint
was McRimmon's. But you could get round his engines without riskin'
your life, an', for all his blindness, I've seen him reject five
flawed intermediates, one after the other, on a nod from me; an'
his cattle-fittin's were guaranteed for North Atlantic winter
weather. Ye ken what that means? McRimmon an' the Black Bird Line,
God bless him!
"Oh, I forgot to say she would lie down an' fill her forward deck
green, an' snore away into a twenty-knot gale forty-five to the
minute, three an' a half knots an hour, the engines runnin' sweet
an' true as a bairn breathin' in its sleep. Bell was skipper; an'
forbye there's no love lost between crews an' owners, we were fond
o' the auld Blind Deevil an' his dog, an' I'm thinkin' he liked us.
He was worth the windy side o' twa million sterlin', an' no friend
to his own blood-kin. Money's an awfu' thing - overmuch - for a
lonely man.
I'd taken her out twice, there an' back again, when word came o'
the Breslau's breakdown, just as I prophesied. Calder was her
engineer - he's not fit to run a tug down the Solent - and he
fairly lifted the engines off the bed-plates, an' they fell down
in heaps, by what I heard.
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