Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/168

146 "Cheaper to build 'em than buy 'em,' I said, but M'Cullough he shied,

And we wasted a year in talking before we moved to the Clyde.

And the Lines were all beginning, and we all of us started fair,

Building our engines like houses and staying the boilers square.

But M'Cullough 'e wanted cabins with marble and maple and all,

And Brussels an' Utrecht velvet, and baths and a Social Hall,

And pipes for closets all over, and cutting the frames too light,

But M'Cullough he died in the Sixties, and Well, I'm dying to-night. . ..

I knew—I knew what was coming, when we bid on the Byfleet's keel—

They piddled and piffled with iron: I'd given my orders for steel!

Steel and the first expansions. It paid, I tell you, it paid,

When we came with our nine-knot freighters and collared the long-run trade!