Not that we were simple enough to have expected more than we had already got, still . . . it was a pity that we had not got the Columban blessing complete.

The amount of water the boat had been making had become a bit of a nuisance. Nothing dangerous, as our pump was good and strong, but the slow increase might become disturbing. So we decided to have a look at her hull. The Crew went ashore to hunt up some plant or other, so the Mate and I heaved out the heavy mat into the cockpit, stripped off the floor boards, and, starting at the stem, removed the iron pigs and examined planking and timbers with an electric torch. The wood in her was really excellent, sound as a bell. The Tobermory owner had oiled and re-oiled the wood to some tune. We found nothing until we came amidships, where the trouble was revealed. The water was coming in copiously from beneath the cross-board on which the end of the flooring next to the engine rested. We saw that this board was nailed to the hull from the outside, and, after thoughtful discussion, decided to prize it free. When we had done this we observed four springs of water bubbling up, each round a copper nail, loose in its socket. As we pushed a nail outward, the spring increased; as we pulled it tight, it lessened. These nails had obviously been worked loose by uneven pressure of floor boards on the cross-beam and not from any fault in the wood of the hull. Having made sure of this, I bethought me of what I had seen coopers do to a whisky cask leaking from a worm-hole (for there are worms that penetrate an inch of whiskied oak stave with so remarkable a neatness that one must assume relish). I made four spiles out of a piece of hardwood, each pointed and shaped to its nail; rubbed them with red lead, and, while the Mate held the nail, hammered in each gently but firmly until it naturally broke off in the nail hole. When the operation was complete, not one drop of water came through.

With aching backs, we sat down there amid the rusty pigs and grease and oily slime and laughed heartily as at a piece of enchantment or miracle. Then we remembered the Crew—for we had been three whole hours engrossed on the job —and when we had the cabin shipshape went out to look for her and saw her seated amid the boulders and weed, patient as the sphinx. We brought her back. She smiled. ‘Wasn’t it fortunate that the wind rose,’ she said, ‘or now we’d be in Colonsay and the leak with us for the rest of the trip.’

So she made up a splendid lunch, and we had a drink before it, and when the rain descended upon us, and the wind increased, and the glass tumbled, we made merry in as happy a small home as was on the seven seas or maybe even on the seven continents.