“In some fields, son,” he had said to Perry, “you can succeed by making a bluff, but in scientific work you’ve got to know, and to know that you know. Science is real and big, all the way through.”
Dr. Hunt met the boy at the New York terminal. Although uncle and nephew knew each other in the vague way that relatives do, neither had ever thought of the other as taking a place in his life, and each anticipated the meeting with great interest.
The professor’s first thought was that the boy looked rugged and sturdy, and Perry’s first thought was that there was far more of command in his uncle’s manner than he remembered. Recalling his father’s advice against “bluffing,” Perry was careful in his statements as he chatted with his uncle on the way to the steamer and consequently gave a favorable impression.
“Your father tells me you know considerable paleontology,” said the leader of the expedition.
“I’ve always been keen on fossils,” the boy replied, “and so I’ve managed to pick up little bits about it. But of course I haven’t really studied; not the way I hope to, some day.”
“You know your geological periods, I suppose?”
“Backwards!” replied Perry confidently, for he knew that he really did know them, and his friend in the Museum had taught him to see how important was this groundwork in any fossil studies that he might do. So, when his uncle, in a few sharp questions, put him on the rack, Perry came out of the ordeal well, because he had only claimed to know exactly the things he did know. As a result, he won from the accurate and careful scientist the golden opinion:
“I shouldn’t be surprised, lad, if we made a paleontologist out of you, after all.”
To an inland boy, such as Perry, every detail of the steamer was of interest. Some of the members of the expedition, who had rather dreaded the idea of a boy as a member of their party, were most cordial to the lad when he showed himself at the same time quiet and eager to learn. To one of the younger men, Antoine Marcq, a Belgian scientist, Perry was especially attracted, and they chummed up right away. Antoine told him that he had a young brother, about Perry’s age. The Belgian proved a most delightful companion, full of stories and with a true scientific imagination. Until the steamer drew clear of the harbor and began to meet the bobbles of a choppy sea, he regaled the lad with adventures from ports all over the world, all of which, it seemed from his yarns, he had visited at some time or other. But the afore-mentioned bobbles gave the ship a wriggling motion of which the boy, at first slightly, then seriously, disapproved, and for the next couple of days even Antoine’s yarns lost their interest. It was the lad’s first sea voyage.
The first morning that he got over his sea-sickness sufficiently to eat a hearty breakfast, which was the third day out, the lad’s attention was attracted to a large gull which was swooping in circles about the masthead. He pointed to it.