"Why, it is not one seaman in three that would trouble his head about a flaw in a ship's inner skin; but I'm a man that looks ahead.

Will you have a glass of grog, sir, now you are here?
I keep that under my eye, too; between ourselves, if the skipper had as much in his cabin as I have here, that might be worse for us all than a crack or two in the ship's inner skin." Mr.Hazel declined to drink grog at that time in the morning, but wished him good-night and left him with a better opinion of him than he had ever had till then.
Wylie, when he was gone, drew a tumbler of neat spirits, drank half, and carried the rest back to his work.
Yet Wylie was a very sober man in a general way.

Rum was his tool; not his master.
When Hazel came to think of it all next day, he did not feel quite so easy as he had done.

The inner skin! But, when Wylie withdrew his auger, the water had squirted in furiously.

He felt it hard to believe that this keen jet of water could be caused by a small quantity that had found its way between the skin of the ship and her copper, or her top booting; it seemed rather to be due to the direct pressure of the liquid monster outside.
He went to the captain that afternoon, and first told him what he had seen, offering no solution.