He glanced up as Alec handed him the volume of naval history and grasped it with the firm gentleness of a true book lover. He turned it over thoughtfully, straightened its sagging covers, opened and closed it several times, and finally spoke:
"Thar's the answer to yer question, Norton," he said. "And that's only one of about a dozen hist'ries I've got on my old shelf. When times is dull or I'm waitin' fer a party who've gone into the Everglades, or when the Arrow is lyin' off shore in a dead calm, then I start in at the first page of the book that happens ter be on the end of the shelf, and I live over the old days of the privateers, when it meant somethin' to sail the seas."
"Who is your biggest hero?" asked Mark as the captain paused.
The old man smiled humorously before he answered.
"Wal', my biggest hero," he said, "is the littlest hero on record as a sea-fighter, I guess. Like Napoleon Bonaparte, his bigness was not in his body but in his mind. And that's Paul Jones of the Bonhomme Richard."
As the captain pronounced the name of his hero, he struck his worn book a resounding slap, and his jaws clicked in emphasis of his statement.
"Can't you tell us something about him?" asked Chester, fascinated by the old captain's earnestness.
"That's the ticket—-I mean, please do," endorsed Billy heartily.
"No, I can't do that," was the deliberate reply, as the captain rose to relieve Dave at the tiller, "but you can all borry the book and read the historian's account of the battle between the Serapis and the Bonhomme Richard. I git so excited when I read that, I hey ter go put my head in a pail o' water to cool it off! Fact! You know that's whar the cap'n of the Serapis calls out: 'Hev ye struck?' And John Paul Jones shouts back: 'Struck! I am just beginnin' ter fight!'"
As Captain Vinton straightened his rounded shoulders and delivered this emphatic quotation, he shook his fist at an imaginary enemy and then brought it down hard on the railing. Then he grinned sheepishly.