a backwater, the flapping clothes the sails of ships that took refuge
there--on Mondays and Tuesdays. Even my father was symbolized with
unparalleled audacity as a watchful government which had, up to the
present, no inkling of our semi-piratical intentions! The cook and the
housemaid, though remonstrating against the presence of Grits, were
friendly confederates; likewise old Cephas, the darkey who, from my
earliest memory, carried coal and wood and blacked the shoes, washed the
windows and scrubbed the steps.

One afternoon Tom went to work....

The history of the building of the good ship Petrel is similar to that of
all created things, a story of trial and error and waste. At last, one
March day she stood ready for launching. She had even been caulked; for
Grits, from an unknown and unquestionably dubious source, had procured a
bucket of tar, which we heated over afire in the alley and smeared into
every crack. It was natural that the news of such a feat as we were
accomplishing should have leaked out, that the "yard" should have been
visited from time to time by interested friends, some of whom came to
admire, some to scoff, and all to speculate. Among the scoffers, of
course, was Ralph Hambleton, who stood with his hands in his pockets and
cheerfully predicted all sorts of dire calamities. Ralph was always a
superior boy, tall and a trifle saturnine and cynical, with an amazing
self-confidence not wholly due to the wealth of his father, the
iron-master. He was older than I.

"She won't float five minutes, if you ever get her to the water," was his
comment, and in this he was supported on general principles by Julia and
Russell Peters. Ralph would have none of the Petrel, or of the South Seas
either; but he wanted,--so he said,--"to be in at the death." The