One day when he was so standing, utterly lost in some unspoken vision, there came a knock at the door, followed by an impatient second one and a thunderous third, all during the moment of time that it took the shipmaster to put out of sight his beloved model. When the door was opened there strode in a tall sunburned person in blue uniform, Humphrey Reynolds come at last to see his old comrade, bringing a roll of government documents under his arm.
“Congress has taken a sudden turn toward increasing the Navy,” the young officer explained, “and the orders are going out to build twelve ships in haste. One of the contracts is to come to you, if you will take it. They are even in such need that they have not laid down the specifications to the last bolt and rope’s end, so that the man who builds this ship and the officer who superintends the construction, can really have something to say about the design.”
He looked his old friend very steadily in the eye and saw a slow smile of deep, unspoken delight dawn upon the shipbuilder’s face. Jonathan Adams’ hard hands did not often tremble, but they shook a little now as he reached up to the shelf above the bench and brought down his model.
“I have been thinking about such a design since I was ten years old,” he said, “and the chance to build it has come at last. We will make them a real ship, Humphrey, and the whole world will open its eyes when it sees you sail her.”
She grew up quickly on the ways, that ship of their very hearts’ desire, with her bowsprit standing far out over the neighboring street, and with people stopping in the lane to watch Jonathan’s whole force of workmen toiling up and down her timbered sides. Old Navy officers who had seen, some of them, the ships of the Revolution, and who had all fought in the War of Eighteen-twelve, would come to inspect her and would shake their heads.
“Look at that high, sharp bow,” one would say; “such a craft will never be seaworthy in the world. Why can’t these young fellows stick to the models we have tried out for them?”
“And see the spread of sail this drawing shows,” another would comment, pointing fiercely with a stubby forefinger; “why, the whole ridiculous affair will capsize in the first good puff of wind! I’m thankful I don’t have to go to sea in her.”
But the two comrades closed their ears and sat, often far into the night, in the cramped little office, poring over drawings and comparing designs.
“You have her thought out to the last ring, block and halyard,” Humphrey would say, “and you never even knew if you could build her. What a dreamer you are!”
“It takes dreaming to keep a man at his work,” Jonathan would answer. “How do you think I would have had the patience, all these years, to drive wooden pins into cross-timbers, or to mend the rigging of limping coastwise schooners if I had not been thinking of just such a ship as this, and seen her, in my mind’s eye, putting to sea under full sail, to smash every sailing record that has been known?”