anyone ask before. I daresay a learned man could tell why it is; and if
you ask your good father when you go back I would wager he can explain
it. It always seems to me as if a boat have got some sort of sense,
just like a human being or a horse, and when she knows which way you
wants her to go she goes. That's how it seems to me--ain't it, Joe?"

"Something like that, uncle. Every one knows that a boat's got her
humours, and sometimes she sails better than she does others; and each
boat's got her own fancies. Some does their best when they are beating,
and some are lively in a heavy sea, and seem as if they enjoy it; and
others get sulky, and don't seem to take the trouble to lift their bows
up when a wave meets them; and they groans and complains if the wind is
too hard for them, just like a human being. 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 broken 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