"Wal, wal!" said 'Bijah, with a sigh. "The Bella S.? Guy, but she was a beauty! An' them fellers up to the City, thet don't know a forestays'l sheet from a marline-spike, they went an' they—" The Captain sputtered wrathily and pulled violently at his pipe.
"What did they do? I should so like to hear," Joan begged.
"'Tis a long yarn; I misdoubt you wouldn't want to hear it."
"I've been longing to hear it ever since the first time I saw you," Joan assured him.
"Wal," said the Cap'n, much pleased by her interest, "the Bella S. was a three-mast schooner, an' she was built by a man I knowed. He was one that'd set by the hour in his sail-loft, jest settin' and thinkin', with a piece o' wood in his hand an' a jack-knife. But all the while he'd be plannin' a ship. 'T would jest grow in his mind like a flower, an' then he'd whittle out a hull jest the lines o' the big hull thet was goin' to be. It's all in thet, ma'am,—gettin' the fust goin's-in right,—an' Sam Cooper he spent more time on the goin's-in o' the Bella S. than any schooner he built. I was in betwixt cruises whilst she was buildin', an' I useter hang round the yard jest watchin' her
