“Yes, twenty-three, weren’t there?”
“No, that’s your number,” said Dan unkindly. “I remember perfectly that we counted twenty-nine.”
“Well, if they don’t look out,” said Tom, as he cast his eye down the chart, “they’re going to run out of names pretty quick. Then what’ll they do?”
“Number them, probably,” Bob suggested.
“Well, I’d take mighty good care not to get wrecked off Number Thirteen if I was a captain,” said Dan.
“Huh! Nobody would bother to rescue you, anyway,” remarked Tom. “The lookout would come in to the station and say, ‘There’s a two-master going to pieces on the bar.’ Then they’d get the telescope and look through it, and the—the captain would say, ‘Oh, it’s the Mary Ann, of Newark, Captain Dan Speede! Don’t you know better than to wake me out of a sound sleep for nothing?’ Then everybody would go back to bed.”
When the laugh had subsided Dan said:
“They might name the stations the way the folks named the streets of the town out West.”
“How’s that?” Nelson asked.
“Well, it’s a story dad used to tell. He said it happened in a place out in Illinois, I’ve forgotten the name of it.”