Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/252

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232
SILVER SHOAL LIGHT

Caleb sat beside him, smoking a pipe of strong tobacco. Garth wore a frown and wielded Caleb's jack-knife on a block of wood with perilous zeal.

"What's up, Cap'n Crosstrees?" Jim inquired, putting down an empty oil-can. "What might you be making?"

"The goin's-in of a schooner," said Garth absently.

"The which?" his father asked.

"The goin's-in of a schooner," said Garth, squinting down the lines of his handiwork. "Cap'n 'Bijah said so. About the Bella S., you know. That's the way his friend built her—whittled the goin's-in just the way she was going to be afterward."

"I see," said Jim. "Will there be a schooner just like these goin's-in of yours? Because I won't sail with her; I'll tell you that now!"

Garth gave his critical parent a look of reproach and peeled a neat shaving from the block.

"I'm not done with her," he said. He threw the knife down suddenly and looked up at Jim.

"And do you know what else Cap'n 'Bijah said about that man, Fogger? That a ship just grew in his mind like a flower, and then he had