; one shift relieved another, and
Cassall employed two superintendents instead of one. The way the notion
came to him was this:--he had an abrupt but most essentially pleasant
way of getting into conversation with casual strangers of all ranks,
and he always managed to learn something from them. "Nice smack that on
the stocks," he remarked to a bronzed, blue-eyed man who was standing
alert on a certain quay.

"Yes, sir. That's honest oak. I like that. But that other's not so
honest."

"You mean the steamer?"

"Yes, sir. I don't like the way things goes along. The surveyor's been
down. He and the manager are having champagne together now, and you may
bet there's some skulking work going on in the dark corners. I know the
ocean tramps, sir. Many's the time I've seen the dishonest rivets start
out of 'em like buttons of a woman's bodice if it's too tight. If I was
an owner, and building a vessel, I'd test every join and every rivet
myself. You force a faulty plate into place, and the first time your
vessel gets across a sea she buckles, and there's an end of all."

"You understand shipbuilding?"

"Only a sailor does, sir. He has the peril; the builders have the
money."

"What are you?" "Merchant captain, sir," said the stout man, turning on
the questioner a clear, light blue eye that shone with health and
evident courage.

"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 w