“Oh, but Tom, they’ll look so handsome,” pleaded Polly. “I’m going to run a beautiful dark blue belt ribbon of paint around the Tidy Jane, and then, under strained circumstances—”
“Now, see here,” Tom crawled laboriously out from under the Jane, a paint pot in one hand and a brush in the other, “you can strain all the circumstances you want, but she won’t go a bit faster.”
The girls broke into a peal of laughter at him, but Tom stolidly refused to see anything funny in the whole proceeding and went on painting reluctantly.
But it paid, even the Captain said so the last day, when he came over on a tour of inspection, and approved of the Polly Page Club’s racers, clean and trim as paint and polish could make them.
“Aren’t they handsome?” asked Polly, proudly, as she stood beside him on the landing, and surveyed the fleet.
“Fine and dandy,” echoed the Captain, heartily. “If they act as saucy as they look, there won’t be a running chance for any other boat on the bay. You want to look out for the Jane, mind. Don’t give her her head. She’s a smart one, now, I tell you. I never let her find out she could get the best of me, but she was always a-trying. Make her feel your hand steady on the tiller, every minute, or she’ll bolt like a wild thing. And when she takes a notion to tilt on her beam end in a good puff of wind, why, let her tilt. She can’t do a mite of harm, not a mite. I’ve had her out when the seas would skip clean over her, and half fill the cockpit, and she’d tilt till she’d lift her centerboard out of the water. Yes, ma’am. And what did I do? Just patted her down easy, and let her drift off a bit to leeward till the wind spilled out of her sail, and when she came about again, she’d right herself like a lady and walk on.”
Polly nodded comprehendingly.
“I know how she acts,” she said. “And that’s just the way I feel about her, too, Captain Carey, as if she were alive, and could almost understand what I say to her.”
“Well, it’s something plain humans can’t know about,” the Captain answered, in his slow, restful, philosophic way. “Every boat on the face of the waters has got just as much personality as you or I, and they’ve got dispositions too. I’ve shipped before now on vessels that you couldn’t make behave themselves any more’n you could harness up a porpoise to a plough. Then I’ve shipped on bashful, nervous creeturs of boats, that would dance and shiver their timbers from one beam end to another, for all the world like some old woman. There was a three-master out of Martha’s Vineyard when I was a lad. She carried various articles of trade along the west coast of Africa, and she was the skeeriest thing I ever sailed on. She had her favorites among the crew too, mind you. I’ve seen her fairly tremble and waver when the pilot for the day would take hold of her. He was a big, slow chap from a place called Noank down on the Connecticut shore. Name was Shad Hardy, and it suited him. He had the identical expression of a shad. I was on night duty then at the wheel, and the minute she’d feel my hand on the spokes, she was like a lamb. I’d speak to her, and steady her up a bit, and she’d march along in the wind, like a grenadier to band music. I always did say it wa’n’t no use trying to make a ship like you, when it had made up its mind it wouldn’t. They’re the notioniest things alive, ’cepting females, and I sometimes think that’s why some discerning seaman called a boat ‘she’ and set public opinion that way.”
“Oh, Captain, when you know how nice we are, and how we mind you,” rebuked Polly. “Just wait till to-morrow.”