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, “and if ever we get back to New Zealand, aboot which I have me doubts, I mean to have a word with them owners for sendin’ such a bunch of trouble to sea.” “She seems to be working all right,” Dave suggested mildly. “_Seems_ to!” the Scot said in scornful accents. “I s’pose you’re deaf on one side so you canna hear that clackety-clack. It fair gives me toothache to listen to it. Dinna say I told you, but I have my suspicions them engines was once used by Noah in the Ark. They’re worn out, and it passes my wit to know how they hold together. Every bearing is as loose as old age can make it, there isn’t a steam pipe that doesn’t leak, and at night when I turn in I expect to find the whole lot of junk has punched a hole in the bottom of the ship and fallen through by mornin’.” Although Dave guessed much of this was exaggerated, it did not tend to make him feel any happier about his choice of ships. “She’s got through all right before,” he said. “Let’s hope she will last out this time.” “Aye, she may,” observed the melancholy Scot, “and then again she mightn’t. You know what happens to the pitcher that goes oftenest to the well. One day this tub is going to attend a funeral, and it’ll be her own. It gives me a pain in the spine to think what may happen if we strike rough weather and she starts kicking up her heels. If that old propeller gets out of the water, with a full head of steam driving it at racing speed, I’ll be wishing myself back in bonnie Scotland.”