“Hullo, you chaps. Come in,” returned Ken, making a place for them on the bench. “The very fellows I want to see,” he said to himself. “What do you think of my boat? Look out, Arthur, you’ll sit on that adze if you don’t be careful. You’ve got to look before you sit in this shop.”
The third boy was meanwhile walking around the boat, inspecting her critically, feeling the wood, measuring the thickness of the timbers, and eying the shape with an approving glance.
“Say, Ken, where are you going to take her? Arctic regions? She’s built strong enough to go around the Horn.” Clyde Morrow looked up at his friend inquiringly. “Ken, did you do all this yourself? She’s great, simply great!”
“Yep—sure—you knew I was building a boat. Why didn’t you come around before?” Then, before they had time to answer, he went on, “Clyde, you said she was strong enough to go around the Horn; she’s got to be strong enough to make a journey almost as long and quite as trying.” He paused a minute and eyed his friends one after the other. Frank and Arthur were sitting side by side on the workbench. Clyde was leaning against the boat, Ransom himself faced them, half leaning, half sitting on a large block of iron that served as an anvil.
“What do you think about cruising to the Atlantic and back in that boat?” Kenneth pointed to the yawl. “Circumnavigating the Eastern half of the United States, in other words.”
“What!” cried Arthur and the other two boys. “You’re crazy!” Clyde added.
“No, I’m not; it can be done and I’m going to try to do it.” Kenneth spoke confidently and with a smile at his friends’ incredulity.
“Wake up, old man,” said Frank with a laugh; “that’s a nice dream, but you’re likely to fall out of bed.”
“Listen; I’ve studied this thing out and it can be done. Wait a minute,” he interrupted himself to say as Clyde opened his mouth to speak. “You know what I want to be and what I want to do, and there is no way of seeing all kinds of boats and experiencing all kinds of weather and conditions of water and climate except by seeing and experiencing them.” He laughed at the lame finish of his sentence. “The best and most thorough way of doing it, it seems to me, is to go in a small boat that you have built yourself and see everything at first-hand. What a cruise it will be! I wish I could go to-morrow.”
“What! do you really mean to go?” said Frank. “Why, you’re clean daft, Ken.”