“Not as I knows on,” answered the man, sulkily. “We ain’t got none of them newfangled things, and don’t want ’em.”
“Dear me, what a very odd ship yours must be,” said Dick. “Is it a steamer, or a sailing vessel, please?”
“Oh, it’s partly a sailing vessel and partly a rowing boat,” said the Skipper. “She’s a very fine ship,” he added, proudly, “come and have a look at her.”
The children followed him to a kind of rough harbor, where a most extraordinary craft was moored. She looked very like a picture which all the children remembered having seen in an old book at home, and although there was a small sail, a number of gaily-painted paddles sticking through the side of the huge boat, showed that, as the Skipper had said, rowing played a very important part in moving it along.
“What a dear old-fashioned thing,” exclaimed Marjorie, directly she saw it.
The Skipper looked rather hurt. “It isn’t more than a thousand years old,” he remarked.
“Well, that’s an awful long time for a ship to last, isn’t it?” said Marjorie, pleasantly.
“Our family is much older than that,” chimed in the Dodo, consequentially. “We date back to——”
“Oh, please don’t go into ancient history,” said the Skipper, “I can’t bear it; it reminds me so of my younger days, when I was first learning to skip.”
“What do you mean?” asked the children.