"Are you in a situation?"
"My vessel's laid up, sir, and I'm waiting to take her again."
"I'm not impertinent, but tell me your wages."
"Ten pound a month, and good enough too, these bad times."
"Then if you'll superintend the building of a vessel for me, I'll give
you L150 a year--or at that rate, and you shall have a smaller vessel
afterwards, if you care to sail a mere smack."
And so the bargain was struck, and Captain Powys was employed as
bulldog, a special clause being inserted in the contract to that effect.
"Men won't like it," said the builder. "They'll lead him a life."
"Tell them, if they do, you lose your contract and they lose their
work." So the splendid little steamer grew apace; she was composite,
and Cassall took care that she should be strong. The most celebrated
living designer of yachts had offered to make the drawings for nothing,
out of mere fondness for Cassall, but the old gentleman paid his heavy
fee. If any one can design a good and safe vessel it is the
yacht-builder, whose little thirty tonners are expected to run quite
securely across the Bay in the wild autumn. The _Robert Cassall_ had not
a nail or bolt in her that was not scrutinized by a stern critic. "Never
mind fancy work or fancy speed. Give me perfect collision bulk-heads;
perfect watertight compartments; make her unsinkable, and I don't care
if you only make her travel ten knots--that's good enough for the North
Sea.
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