LOST ISLAND
about paint, or because the skipper was indifferent, the old Kingfisher had a dilapidated appearance, and in anything but the calmest weather she was known pleasantly by the crew as "the submarine," by reason of her trick of digging her nose into the waves instead of riding on top of them.
But bad as her appearance and sailing qualities were, it was her machinery which was worst, and Dave found that MacTavish, her Scottish engineer, never tired of bemoaning his fate in having to drive such "scrap iron." The Kingfisher was a much smaller vessel than the one which had carried Dave to New Zealand, and he found that the various officers had a proportionately smaller idea of their own dignity. MacTavish had many chats with the boy, taking a certain amount of interest in him because his own wife was a New York woman. But most of his conversation was about that "rattle-box doon below,"
"I only shipped in her for this voyage," he said,
104
