The Voyage of the Norman D.
And so Mother and I escaped from the house and went down to see the schooner again. This proved to be one of the most thrilling visits of all. When we got aboard, the mate was sitting on top of the deckhouse piecing the great outer jib. That sail had been ripped in a gale, and they had taken it off the jibboom to mend it. The mate had a huge rope-needle, and he wore a regular sailmaker's thimble, which is a small metal disk set in a leather strap worn around the wrist. He was putting in a strip of new canvas, which looked very clean and white in contrast to the other. We had a little talk; then I played about the ship as usual, climbing along her bulwarks—in fact, literally skipping and running along her bulwarks, to Mother's terror. Then, after I had climbed up to the crosstrees two or three times, always looking rather longingly at the topsail ratlines, Captain Avery asked us if we would like to eat supper with him, aft, at four bells (six o'clock) . Mother called me down from some high perch and asked me. Would I eat a meal on a real ship? Would I indeed!
So down we went, into the room where the massive table was hooked up to the wall. Before that I had become well acquainted with the cook, a delightful old man who told us he was up in the seventies somewhere. (You may believe it or not, but his name was Oscar Follett.) He was, or at least had been, the best sailor aboard; he had served in real
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