“Hello!” he exclaimed presently. “That you, Lathrop? Well, the boys have put one over on us two old fogies again! Yes, owners invited them all right. Say the ship won’t sail without them too. Yes. Guess we’ll have to let them go. Oh, Edwards. Yes, both Mike and Pem. Oh, yes, I forgot—Tom and Jim bought up the controlling interest—managing owners themselves. Ha, ha! Yes, they’ve won out!”
“Then we can go!” cried Tom, as his father hung up the receiver.
“I always stick to a bargain,” replied Mr. Chester, “and Jim’s father says he does too. So you might as well hire your crew and get the old Narwhal fitted out.”
Cap’n Pem and Mike were as tickled as two children over the boys’ ruse and its success. Both the old sailors having been engaged, they set to work, Cap’n Pem looking after the details of reconditioning the schooner, while Mike haunted New Bedford’s water front and lodging houses, searching out the former crew of the Hector.
The next few weeks were very busy ones for the two boys, who had invested their little fortune in the Narwhal, and now found themselves the principal owners of a real whaling vessel. The details of the business, as well as the financial arrangements, repairs, and outfitting were turned over to Mr. Dixon and to Mr. Nye, for the latter had bought considerable stock in the Narwhal also. And work proceeded rapidly aboard the ship.
There seemed to be an endless number of things to be done. The old ship’s timbers were in good shape and little of her planking had to be replaced, but she had to be caulked and pitched and painted and ice sheathing was put on. Her spars were worthless and her rigging had to be entirely stripped from her, and new rigging rove. Much of her decks were also badly rotted and, as Tom said, when on one occasion he looked ruefully at the almost empty hulk, minus masts and rigging, “By the time they get through she’ll be a new ship.”
But old Cap’n Pem did not agree with him. “Hanged if she will!” he exclaimed, “why, Lor’ love ye, ’tain’t a ship’s spars an’ riggin’ what makes the ship. It’s the timbers an’ hull. Bless my soul! If ev’ry time a ship got dismasted an’ had ter have a new set o’ spars, it made a new ship of her, thar wouldn’t be nary an ol’ ship lef’. Shucks! Ye wouldn’t say yer Dad built a new house jes ’cause he put a new chimbly or a new verandy on it, would ye?”
Tom laughed. “No,” he admitted, “but if Dad took out all the inside of the house, and then took off the boards and just left the old cellar, I’d call it pretty near a new house, and that’s what we’re doing with the Narwhal.”
“Not by a long shot!” burst out the old whaleman, to whom an old hull was almost sacred. “Ye’d find a purty diff’runce in what ye’d have to pay if ye wuz to build a new schooner ’stead o’ refittin’ this here hooker.”
Then, when at last the hull and decks were done and it came to rigging, dissension arose as to how the Narwhal should be rigged. Mr. Dixon, who was of the new school, wanted a three-masted schooner and some of the other owners, a two-master, while one old fellow insisted a bark was the only rig. But the boys stoutly insisted that their ship, as they called her, must be rigged as she was originally and they were sustained by Mr. Nye, while old Cap’n Pem vowed he’d not take the place as ice pilot unless she was a square topsail schooner.