The boy looked up with a doubtful smile.
“You could,” added the captain, “but she’d have to be better braced. The trouble was when you turned her in a sea. The waves would raise one boat and drop the other. The steel beams wouldn’t hold.”
Andy nodded, and carried one of the six-foot propellers nearer the door. It was of some light, close-grained wood, finished as smoothly as glass. The blades, pear-shaped with a decided pitch, tapered gracefully to the metal shaft-block in the center.
“Where’d he get these?” asked Andy admiringly, as he brushed the dust from the golden-varnished blades.
“I’m a little proud o’ them,” confessed the captain. “I made ’em. But they weren’t my idea. I never saw anything like ’em until your uncle laid ’em out on paper, curves and all.”
“What’ll you take for them?” asked the boy longingly.
“Didn’t I tell you all that truck is yours or your mother’s, or your father’s?”
“Did uncle pay you for your work?”
“Well, to tell the truth, it wasn’t a question of pay between us,” explained the captain. “It was his idea and his boat. I made him a present of all I did.”