I was not sorry. It would help to keep the seas off. But Pukkie took one last look around, drew one long, quivering breath, and came up.
"Oh, see!" he cried.
I turned and looked where he was pointing. There was the little wheel, which we had seen before; and there too was a tiny binnacle with its compass, cunningly contrived to take no room, set just forward of the wheel.
"Do you like it, Pukkie?" Old Goodwin asked somewhat wistfully. "Do you think that you'll like her as well as you would have liked a dory?"
"Like her!" cried Pukkie. "Like her! Oh, grandfather!"
And he leaped at his grandfather, and seized him about the neck, and hid his face; and Old Goodwin patted Pukkie's shoulder, somewhat awkwardly, and smiled at Eve and me. I wonder what is the market value of the time that Old Goodwin wastes upon his grandson.
Then Pukkie would go sailing at once. It did not matter that it was time for luncheon, although my clock that I carry beneath my belt told me that it was. He was not hungry. It did not occur to him to wonder about me, or he would have offered to get me a luncheon in his galley. So we set forth to sail the raging main; a little sail of half an hour, with Eve and Old Goodwin to see us off.
So we set all the little sails, but we did not get out from the sail locker that gafftopsail and the jibtopsail and that wonderful flying jib. The wind was moderately strong. And we glided out from Old Goodwin's harbor with me at the wheel, and Pukkie sitting beside me with shining face. The little boat was handy, and she went about her business with no fuss, and the water began to hiss past under her rail. And I sat the straighter. Truly, what is luncheon?
We passed some fishermen going out—the same way that we were going, and we passed them as if they were at anchor; and they gazed in amazement and I saw them pointing. I headed for a lighter that I saw dimly through the light haze—she was anchored by a wreck, as I chanced to know—and I gave up the wheel to Pukkie.