When you goes to a new vessel you have got to learn her tricks
and her ways and what she will do, and what she won't do, and just
to humour her as you would a child. I don't say as I think she
is actually alive; but every sailor will tell you that there is
something about her that her builders never put there."

"That's so," John Lirriper agreed. "Look at a boat that is hove
up when her work's done and going to be broke up. Why, anyone can
tell her with half an eye. She looks that forlorn and melancholy
that one's inclined to blubber at the sight of her. She don't look
like that at any other time. When she is hove up she is going to
die, and she knows it."

"But perhaps that's because the paint's off her sides and the ropes
all worn and loose," Geoffrey suggested.

But Master Lirriper waved the suggestion aside as unworthy even of
an answer, and repeated, "She knows it. Anyone can see that with
half an eye."

Geoffrey and Lionel talked the matter over when they were sitting
together on deck apart from the others. It was an age when there
were still many superstitions current in the land. Even the upper
classes believed in witches and warlocks, in charms and spells, in
lucky and unlucky days, in the arts of magic, in the power of the
evil eye; and although to the boys it seemed absurd that a vessel
should have life, they were not prepared altogether to discredit an
idea that was evidently thoroughly believed by those who had been
on board ships all their lives. After talking it over for some time
they determined to submit the question to their father on their