human
Take care your machinery don't break down again, Mr Rivett, observed Mr Scales, the master, who was generally known as Gunter Scale.
gpt
We've got a ticklish part of the ocean to navigate, I can tell you, and if your engines fail just at the moment they are wanted to back astern off a coral reef, or keep the ship from being drifted on a lee shore, I shan't have much to say in their favour.
human
I beg, Mr Scales, that you will not take the ship into any such position. I understood that every rock and shoal between us and the south pole was well laid down, and it will be your fault if we come upon danger without knowing it beforehand.
gpt
You were wrongly informed, Mr Rivett; and there is many a rock, and many a shoal, and many an island, too, between us and the pole which no one alive knows anything about, although many a poor fellow has found them out too late, when his ship has run right upon them.
human
What you say reminds me of the Irish pilot who told the captain of a ship he was taking to an anchorage, that he knew every rock on the coast. The captain doubted him, and five minutes afterwards the ship went crash upon one. `Bedad! I tould your honour I knew thim, an' that's one of thim. There's many a rock I've found out in the same manner,'
gpt
I hope we shall find out none in that fashion,
human
That will depend on your machinery, said Mr Gunter Scale, chuckling.
gpt
We shall have to keep a bright look-out ahead and the lead going, and if your piston rods and boilers prove faithful, well and good. If not, I cannot warrant that the ship will keep out of the danger into which that screw of yours will run us. Let me have her under canvas and I'll know where I'll go and where I'll not go, and I'll answer for it that I won't run a ship under my charge into a place where her sails can't take her off again.
human
Then you have not perfect confidence in my machinery?
gpt
No, I have not, and I wonder that you expect me to have. I say again, give me tough masts, sound spars, well set-up rigging, and stout canvas, with a properly built ship under my feet, and I'll keep the sea in all weathers, and carry her safely round the world.