There
was the boat - she was all right, wasn't she? I strolled along the
deck and in one minute counted fourteen butts in the beautiful
planking ordered specially from Puget Sound in order that there
should be no butts in it. Also, that deck leaked, and it leaked
badly. It drowned Roscoe out of his bunk and ruined the tools in
the engine-room, to say nothing of the provisions it ruined in the
galley. Also, the sides of the Snark leaked, and the bottom leaked,
and we had to pump her every day to keep her afloat. The floor of
the galley is a couple of feet above the inside bottom of the Snark;
and yet I have stood on the floor of the galley, trying to snatch a
cold bite, and been wet to the knees by the water churning around
inside four hours after the last pumping.
Then those magnificent water-tight compartments that cost so much
time and money - well, they weren't water-tight after all. The water
moved free as the air from one compartment to another; furthermore,
a strong smell of gasolene from the after compartment leads me to
suspect that some one or more of the half-dozen tanks there stored
have sprung a leak. The tanks leak, and they are not hermetically
sealed in their compartment. Then there was the bath-room with its
pumps and levers and sea-valves - it went out of commission inside
the first twenty hours.
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