“Maybe we can send mail home on her,” said some one, and the letter writers hastened to put their epistles into envelopes and hurried off to the ship’s writer for stamps.
But they might have saved their efforts. It was Ned who called their attention to the fact that, inasmuch as the strange craft was a sailing ship, it was not likely that she would reach America before the mail steamer from the Sandwich Islands.
The Jackies clustered forward like a swarm of bees watching the ship as they came closer to her. She was an odd-looking craft, bluff-bowed, clumsy, and rigged as a barque with short, stumpy masts and wide yards. In the calm she appeared to be hardly moving and it soon became evident that they would pass quite close to her.
All sorts of guesses were hazarded as to what the wanderer of the seas would prove to be.
“She’s a Rooshian, you can tell that by the cut of her jib,” declared old Harness Cask, knowingly.
“No such thing,” contradicted another ancient mariner, “she’s a whaler.”
“Not she. Where’s her boats?” came from another foc’sle wiseacre.
“Whatever she is, she is an old-timer,” spoke Ned.
“You’re right there, young feller,” growled old Harness Cask. “Afore I jined the navy I’d sailed on many a craft just like her, but they don’t build nothing but eighteen knot steel tanks nowadays, an it ain’t often that a good old barky gets your eye.”
“Aye, aye, all sailoring’s gone adrift,” agreed another veteran of the seas. “Young chaps nowadays who can handle a paint-brush or a gun are shoved ahead of them as knows every rope and sail on a ship. It weren’t so when I was a young feller.”