The discomfited Captain Baker frowned.
"Mine comes out even minutes, anyhow," announced he. "If it does shoot ahead some, it don't keep me reckonin' in fractions like yours does. I'd see myself in Davie Jones's locker 'fore I'd go addin' three-quarter minutes together from sunrise to sunset."
"Oh, addin' fractions is mighty good trainin' for Benjamin," put in the peace-loving Captain Phineas, with a chuckle. "It keeps his arithmetic brushed up. I'll bet you he could beat you at a sum, Jonas."
The triumphant Captain Benjamin observed a complacent silence.
"Let Benjamin an' his watch alone, Jonas," drawled Zenas Henry, speaking for the first time. "Somebody in the house has got to be up on mathematics, an' it may as well be Benjamin as another. I'm only sorry his ticker holds him just to addin'; if it would only make him multiply an' divide some, an' take him into square root 'twould give him a liberal all-round education. Still, there's always hopes it may take a new turn. The last time it went overboard there was indications that 'twouldn't be long before 'twould be leadin' him into algebra an' the fourth dimension."
Captain Benjamin grinned at the sally.
"It won't be goin' overboard no more now, Zenas Henry," responded he serenely, "'cause since the Sea Gull's got that eel-grass-proof contrivance hitched to her, there won't be no call for me to be lyin' head down'ards astern. I'll be settin' up like a Christian in future—all of us will. My soul, but Bob Morton an' Willie Spence did a good job on that boat! It's somethin' to have a young chap with brains like that marryin' into the family! I'll bet there's 'most nothin' on earth he couldn't tackle."
"You're right!" Captain Phineas chimed in. "If Delight's got to get married—an' we'd be a lot of selfish brutes not to want her to—she certainly has picked a promisin' husband. You can lose money—fling it away or have it stolen from you—but you can't lose brains."
"That's so, Phineas! That's so!" Zenas Henry said. "Besides, 'tain't as if he was takin' her to Indiana. New York ain't fur. Why, I'll stake a catch of mackerel we could fetch up at that Long Island place in the Sea Gull."
"Of course we could, Zenas Henry," agreed Captain Jonas, flashing a glance of affection into his friend's face. "There's no question about it. Take a good clear day an' the sea runnin' right, we could make it without a mite of trouble. Long Island wouldn't be anything of a cruise. No place that we can sail to in our own boat is fur away."