So she filled from the after
stuffin'-box to the after bulkhead, an' lay star-gazing, with
seventy-nine squealin' passengers in the saloon, till the
Camaralzaman o' Ramsey & Gold's Cartagena line gave her a tow to
the tune o' five thousand seven hunder an' forty pound, wi' costs
in the Admiralty Court. She was helpless, ye'll understand, an' in
no case to meet ony weather. Five thousand seven hunder an' forty
pounds, with costs, an' exclusive o' new engines! They'd ha' done
better to ha' kept me on the old timin'.
"But, even so, the new Board were all for retrenchment. Young
Steiner, the Jew, was at the bottom of it. They sacked men right
an' left, that would not eat the dirt the Board gave 'em. They cut
down repairs; they fed crews wi' leavin's an' scrapin's; and,
reversin', McRimmon's practice, they hid their defeeciencies wi'
paint an' cheap gildin'. Quem Deus vult perrdere prrius dementat,
ye remember.
"In January we went to dry-dock, an' in the next dock lay the Grotkau,
their big freighter that was the Dolabella o' Piegan, Piegan & Walsh's
line in '84 - a Clyde-built iron boat, a flat-bottomed,
pigeon-breasted, under-engined, bull-nosed bitch of a five thousand
ton freighter, that would neither steer, nor steam, nor stop when ye
asked her.
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