The Voyage of the Norman D.
and a little red painted ornament on the top of the cutwater. Her hull seemed to me to be of a beautiful shape—but it was beautiful enough to see a wooden hull at all, these days.
The captain explained to me a great many things about a sailing vessel, and I went home with a much clearer idea of things. He told me all the names of the sails, showed me the gaffs, which I had never quite understood, and told me which sails were usually taken in first in a wind, and which were first hoisted. Like Jim Hawkins when he found Long John Silver, I began to realize that here was a shipmate! If I could live with Captain Avery for a while, I did not doubt but that I should really know something.
***
There could be only three or four different results to all this. So far, the result was that we invited the captain out to dinner the next Sunday, and arranged to have the Bryans come over "to meet a real old sea captain." Accordingly, Sunday morning about half-past ten (five bells), I set out alone for the schooner. Again I had the pleasure of seeing her proud and noble topmasts against the sky, but this time I could go tearing at full speed down Brewery Street. Yet I was not so hasty but that I stopped to
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