第6章

Inquiries of lumber-yards developing the disconcerting fact that four dollars and seventy-five cents was inadequate to buy the material itself,to say nothing of the cost of steaming and bending the ribs,Ireluctantly abandoned the ideal of the graceful craft I had sketched,and compromised on a flat bottom.Observe how the ways of deception lead to transgression:I recalled the cast-off lumber pile of Jarvis,the carpenter,a good-natured Englishman,coarse and fat:in our neighbourhood his reputation for obscenity was so well known to mothers that I had been forbidden to go near him or his shop.Grits Jarvis,his son,who had inherited the talent,was also contraband.I can see now the huge bulk of the elder Jarvis as he stood in the melting,soot-powdered snow in front of his shop,and hear his comments on my pertinacity.

"If you ever wants another man's missus when you grows up,my lad,Gawd 'elp 'im!""Why should I want another man's wife when I don't want one of my own?"I demanded,indignant.

He laughed with his customary lack of moderation.

"You mind what old Jarvis says,"he cried."What you wants,you gets."I did get his boards,by sheer insistence.No doubt they were not very valuable,and without question he more than made up for them in my mother's bill.I also got something else of equal value to me at the moment,--the assistance of Grits,the contraband;daily,after school,Ismuggled him into the shed through the alley,acquiring likewise the services of Tom Peters,which was more of a triumph than it would seem.

Tom always had to be "worked up"to participation in my ideas,but in the end he almost invariably succumbed.The notion of building a boat in the dead of winter,and so far from her native element,naturally struck him at first as ridiculous.Where in Jehoshaphat was I going to sail it if Iever got it made?He much preferred to throw snowballs at innocent wagon drivers.

All that Tom saw,at first,was a dirty,coal-spattered shed with dim recesses,for it was lighted on one side only,and its temperature was somewhere below freezing.Surely he could not be blamed for a tempered enthusiasm!But for me,all the dirt and cold and discomfort were blotted out,and I beheld a gallant craft manned by sturdy seamen forging her way across blue water in the South Seas.Treasure Island,alas,was as yet unwritten;but among my father's books were two old volumes in which I had hitherto taken no interest,with crude engravings of palms and coral reefs,of naked savages and tropical mountains covered with jungle,the adventures,in brief,of one Captain Cook.I also discovered a book by a later traveller.Spurred on by a mysterious motive power,and to the great neglect of the pons asinorum and the staple products of the Southern States,I gathered an amazing amount of information concerning a remote portion of the globe,of head-hunters and poisoned stakes,of typhoons,of queer war-craft that crept up on you while you were dismantling galleons,when desperate hand-to-hand encounters ensued.

Little by little as I wove all this into personal adventures soon to be realized,Tom forgot the snowballs and the maddened grocery-men who chased him around the block;while Grits would occasionally stop sawing and cry out:--"Ah,s'y!"frequently adding that he would be G--d--d.

The cold woodshed became a chantry on the New England coast,the alley the wintry sea soon to embrace our ship,the saw-horses--which stood between a coal-bin on one side and unused stalls filled with rubbish and kindling on the other--the ways;the yard behind the lattice fence became a backwater,the flapping clothes the sails of ships that took refuge there--on Mondays and Tuesdays.Even my father was symbolized with unparalleled audacity as a watchful government which had,up to the present,no inkling of our semi-piratical intentions!The cook and the housemaid,though remonstrating against the presence of Grits,were friendly confederates;likewise old Cephas,the darkey who,from my earliest memory,carried coal and wood and blacked the shoes,washed the windows ,and scrubbed the steps.

One afternoon Tom went to work....

The history of the building of the good ship Petrel is similar to that of all created things,a story of trial and error and waste.At last,one March day she stood ready for launching.She had even been caulked;for Grits,from an unknown and unquestionably dubious source,had procured a bucket of tar,which we heated over afire in the alley and smeared into every crack.It was natural that the news of such a feat as we were accomplishing should have leaked out,that the "yard"should have been visited from time to time by interested friends,some of whom came to admire,some to scoff,and all to speculate.Among the scoffers,of course,was Ralph Hambleton,who stood with his hands in his pockets and cheerfully predicted all sorts of dire calamities.Ralph was always a superior boy,tall and a trifle saturnine and cynical,with an amazing self-confidence not wholly due to the wealth of his father,the iron-master.He was older than I.

"She won't float five minutes,if you ever get her to the water,"was his comment,and in this he was supported on general principles by Julia and Russell Peters.Ralph would have none of the Petrel,or of the South Seas either;but he wanted,--so he said,--"to be in at the death."The Hambletons were one of the few families who at that time went to the sea for the summer,and from a practical knowledge of craft in general Ralph was not slow to point out the defects of ours.Tom and I defended her passionately.