City and Suburban
Rising damp
Nigel the captain and Robin the first mate are sitting in their boat, which is leaking. Robin's feet have got wet, but he cannot bale the boat out, because Nigel has confiscated the baler, and is sitting on it. Robin opens the subject diplomatically. 'The seas are so big,' he says, 'and our boat is so small. Do you think our boat is sinking?" On the contrary,' says Nigel, 'it's floating. That's what it's meant to be doing. Sometimes it floats up, and some- times it floats down. So long as we keep it properly trimmed, we don't have to bale it or steer it. That's all in the strategy.' The water is up to Robin's shins. 'I've heard a forecast', he says hopefully, 'that we shall soon be ten per cent nearer the Plimsoll line.' I've heard it too, and it must be right sometime,' says Nigel, emptying barrels of crude oil over the stern: 'it's not our fault if there's too much oil on troubled waters.' Robin mutters that for the price of that oil they could have bought another baler. 'Can't we head up into the swell?' he says. 'When I was a midshipman, the first mates would be steering 12 per cent or 15 per cent to starboard by now.' So they would,' says Nigel, 'but we know better. We're on the right course, so why should we change it? Anyway, if we're lower in the water, our cargoes will get to foreign ports quicker, because there will be less resistance.' I thought that if we got the trim right, the boat would look after itself. . . ."Belay there, Mr Mate.' Robin's discomfort is creeping up. 'How would it be', he asks, 'if we got the life raft inflated? I mean, there seems to be quite a lot of. . . ."What did I tell you about the trim?' snaps Nigel. His mate splashes to attention and salutes,
looking like a U-boat commander making a final gesture of chivalry. It would be a good part for Gregory Peck, just as the
captain's would be a good part for Charles Laughton in his Bounty period. 'Sir,' says
Robin, 'previous first mates, and previous captains, have found that by the time they were up to their necks in the water, they had to do something about it, whether they liked it or not.' I hear you, Mr Mate,' says Captain Nigel, 'and I'm sorry about the leak at your end of the boat."Aye, aye, Sir,' says the mate.
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