Chapter Thirteen.
Only a Glass of Water.
The keeping watch of a night had now grown into a regular business habit, and though we discovered nothing, the feeling was always upon us that if we relaxed our watchfulness for a few hours something would happen.
The paper stuck on the door was not forgotten by my uncles, but the men went on just as usual, and the workshops were as busy as ever, and after a good deal of drawing and experimenting Uncle Dick or Uncle Jack kept producing designs for knives or tools to be worked up out of the new steel.
“But,” said I one day, “I don’t see that this reaping-hook will be any better than the old-fashioned one.”
“The steel is better and will keep sharp longer, my lad, but people would not believe that it was in the slightest degree different, unless they had something to see,” said Uncle Dick.
So the men were set to forge and grind the different shaped tools and implements that were designed, and I often heard them laughing and jeering at what they called the “contrapshions.”
My turn came round to keep the morning watch about a week after the new bands had been fitted. Uncle Bob had been on guard during the night, and just as I was comfortably dreaming of a pleasant country excursion I was awakened by a cheery, “Tumble up, Tumble up!”
I sat up confused and drowsy, but that soon passed off as Uncle Bob laughingly told me, in sham nautical parlance, that all was well on deck; weather hazy, and no rocks ahead as far as he knew.
“Oh,” I said yawning, “I do wish all this watching was over!”