Whiles she'd attend to her helm, whiles she'd take charge,
whiles she'd wait to scratch herself, an' whiles she'd buttock into
a dockhead. But Holdock and Steiner had bought her cheap, and
painted her all over like the Hoor o' Babylon, an' we called her the
Hoor for short." (By the way, McPhee kept to that name throughout
the rest of his tale; so you must read accordingly.) "I went to
see young Bannister - he had to take what the Board gave him, an'
he an' Calder were shifted together from the Breslau to this
abortion - an' talkin' to him I went into the dock under her. Her
plates were pitted till the men that were paint, paint, paintin'
her laughed at it. But the warst was at the last. She'd a great
clumsy iron twelve-foot Thresher propeller - Aitcheson designed the
Kites' - and just on the tail o' the shaft, behind the boss, was a
red weepin' crack ye could ha' put a penknife to. Man, it was an
awful crack!
"'When d' ye ship a new tail-shaft?' I said to Bannister.
"He knew what I meant. 'Oh, yon's a superfeecial flaw,' says he,
not lookin' at me.
"'Superfeecial Gehenna!' I said. 'Ye'll not take her oot wi' a
solution o' continuity that like.
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