[a]THE SAIL LOFT]
Nights, especially dark nights, the children watched with unfailing interest the great flash-light from the lighthouse out on the point. Captain Hawes had explained the uses of lighthouses, how they showed the way to ships at night, like signs on street corners or crossroads, and also warned them to keep away from the rocks. One day he rowed them out, and the light-keeper took them up in the tower and proudly showed them the powerful lamp with its complicated reflectors, and explained it all. Betty admired the bright, shining appearance of things, and was surprised to learn that the man himself looked after all this: she had thought that only a housekeeper could keep up such a polish.
Another time Captain Hawes took the children to Barry's sail loft, where the sails for the new ship were being made. He had already told them something about sailmaking, but knew they would understand better by seeing the real things. The sail loft, like everything connected with ships, proved interesting,—the broad clean floor, the men on their low benches sewing the seams of the heavy canvas, forcing the needles through with the stout leather "palms," instead of thimbles. And all their neat tools, the "heavers," "stickers," "fids," "grummet stamps," and such odd-named things.
On the wall in one corner of the loft was a varied collection of bright "clew irons" and "rings," "thimbles" and "cringles," which aroused the children's curiosity. These, it was explained, were to be sewed into the corners of the sails to hold the ropes for rigging. Here and there compact, heavy rolls of canvas, sails completed, were lying by, ready to be taken away and rigged to the tall masts and broad yards of the ship; sails which later would look so light and graceful when carrying the ship along.