Captain Sharkey
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Maintenance was a very necessary operation for the elderly pirate. It depended on his extraordinary speed, both for the overhaul of the merchant and for the escape from the man of war. But if he did not periodically - at least once a year - clean the bottom of his ship from long, attracting plants and cortical barnacles that collected too quickly in tropical seas, it was impossible to preserve its sail characteristics. To do this, he relaxed his container, pushed it to a narrow inlet, where he remained high and dry in low water, attached the blocks and attached gear to his poles to pull on himself, and then carefully scraped them into the water cut from the steering post.
