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 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. 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 awfu' crack!

"'When d' ye ship a new tail-shaft?' I said to Bannister.