“That’s the kind of helper I have,” he exclaimed. “Comes when he likes, goes when he likes, does what he likes. His mother and Sally can’t do a thing with him. And stupid! Why, there’s nothing you can teach him, no matter how you try. He has fished and paddied along this shore all his life, but he doesn’t know a thing about boats; he can’t tell the difference between a sloop and a knockabout. And what’s more,—” here the old man turned full upon Billy and dropped his voice as though he hated to speak so dreadful a thing aloud—“what’s more, he says he doesn’t want to know.”
Billy opened his mouth to say something in reply, and then shut it again. He realized that the ignorance of which the Captain spoke was as great as would be the inability to distinguish between a dog and a cat, but he was unwilling to betray the fact that he was as much in the dark as Jacky Shute. A few hours ago he would have been quite scornful of any such knowledge; now he felt a strong desire to hide his ignorance, a desire which, in turn, gave way to an even greater wish. He fought against it, reminded himself over and over again how determined he was to despise everything that had to do with the sea, how he hated Appledore and would have no interest in it. But there was something about the rough old sailor’s bent figure, broken by a hundred tempests yet strong and determined still, there was something about the tossing blue water, about the wide, unbroken horizon, about the fresh, sharp, salt air that made him feel—well, different in a most indefinable way.
They sat in silence for a little while until the old man’s pipe was smoked out, and Billy felt that it was time for him to go. He rose, held out his hand to say good-bye, and then suddenly felt his wish so strong within him that it broke forth into words.
“Captain Saulsby,” he said, “I don’t know the difference between a sloop and a knockabout, either. I don’t know anything about the sea or about boats. I wish you would teach me.”
The sailor’s gnarled old brown hand was laid very gently on his shoulder.
“Bless you, how should you know,” he answered; “you that never saw salt water before today? Sure, I’ll teach you anything I know; sit right down again and listen.”
Miss Mattie Pearson, up at the hotel, must have rocked and knitted and knitted and rocked a long, long time that day as she watched for her nephew’s return. The bright red sock that she was making for the Belgians grew several inches, the other guests went in to dinner, but still she waited, nor did she seem impatient. She was spare and elderly and beginning to be white-haired; she might have answered well enough to Billy’s description of her as an “old maid aunt” but she had keen grey eyes that had been able to look pretty deeply into her nephew’s rebellious young soul. He had been sullen and discontented ever since his arrival that morning and, if he had made any efforts to conceal his state of mind, they had not been successful ones. So she had sent him off in the direction of Captain Saulsby’s house and seemed not in the least surprised or displeased that he was so long in coming back. Old maid aunts sometimes have a way of knowing things, just from the fact that they have lived so long.
Meanwhile Billy was still sitting on the bench listening, entranced, to details of full-rigged ships, schooners, yawls, raceabouts and dories. His head began to reel under the weight of all the knowledge poured out upon him, so that, finally, it was only with mighty effort that he followed what the Captain was saying. Even the old sailor realized this at length and decided to have mercy.
“I will tell you what we can do,” he said. “We will make you a model; schooner-rigged, we will have her, with everything complete and shipshape, so that you can learn the ropes too well ever to forget them. No,” as Billy tried to remonstrate, “of course I will have time. What is an old man good for, when he can’t follow the sea any longer, but to hand on what he knows to some one who will do him credit some day? Yes, we will build you a model and she shall be called the Josephine, after the first ship I ever sailed in; the finest one that ever crossed the seas.”
As Billy finally took his way homeward, his mind was a seething mass of nautical terms which he vainly tried to set in order.