So trifling an incident may seem a blot on these well-written pages, but it is related because it discovers the characteristics of boys.
Will and Jim, awed by the parental presence, said but little during the voyage homewards. Stephen, however,—whose spirits neither strange gentlemen, nor blustering seamen, nor chilling rains, nor raging seas, could damp,—soon recovered his sprightliness, and demanded:—
“Why didn’t you come for us in the steamboat there at the wharf? It would have taken so much less time to reach us.”
“The steamboat!” echoed a sailor, wondering more than ever at these boys. “Well, that beats all! A steamboat! You must be a goose! You live beside the lake, and I’ve seen you poking about the vessels and steamers, as smart and pert as a homeless peanut boy; and yet you ask me such a question! Don’t you know, from watching the engineers, how long it takes to get on a good head of steam? And, s’pose we had come for you in the steamboat—why, it would have knocked you and your ragamuffin’s punt endwise!”
Steve fetched a hollow and piteous sigh, and mumbled something about knowing something.
“Yes, of course; but if you had brought along a few gallons of oil,” suggested the sage, rejoicing in the opportunity afforded for holding up his knowledge, even in so hopeless a cause, “you could have calmed the water, stopped the steamer, and picked us up without any trouble.
“Exactly—if you had been worth a few gallons of oil!” was the crusty blue-jacket’s cutting reply.
“The life-boat is the right thing to go and save people in,” Marmaduke commented.
“Yes, of course it is;” the sage hastened to observe. “I only made the remark.”