Behind it and beyond it a faint "tap-tap" was now audible.

Barebone knew it to be the sound of a caulker's hammer in the Government repairing yard on the south side.
They were drifting past the mouth of the Harwich River.
The leadsman called out a depth which Loo could have told without the help of line or lead.

For he had served a long apprenticeship on these coasts under a captain second to none in the North Sea.
He turned a little on his bed of sails under repair, at which the Captain had been plying his needle while the weather remained clear, and glanced over his shoulder toward the ship's dinghy towing astern.

The rope that held it was made fast round the rail a few feet away from him.

The boat itself was clumsy, shaped like a walnut, of a preposterous strength and weight.