The Cruise of the Jasper B. | Page 9

leave--a tall, strong-looking old man with long legs and knotty wrists,
who moved across the deck with surprising spryness. At the gangplank
he sang out without turning his head:
"As far as my bein' a skipper's concerned, they's no law agin' callin' me
Cap'n Abernethy if you want to. I come of a seafarin' fambly."
He crossed the platform; when he had gone thirty yards further he
stopped, turned around, and shouted:
"Is she a schooner, hey? You want to know is she a schooner? If you
was askin' me, she ain't NOTHIN' now. But if you was to ask me again
I might say she COULD be schooner-rigged. Lots of boats IS
schooner-rigged."

There are affinities between atom and atom, between man and woman,
between man and man. There are also affinities between men and
things-if you choose to call a ship, which has a spirit of its own, merely
a thing. There must have been this affinity between Cleggett and the
Jasper B. Only an unusual person would have thought of buying her.
But Cleggett loved her at first sight.
Within an hour after he had first seen her he was in Mr. Abraham
Goldberg's office.
As he was concluding his purchase--Mr. Goldberg having phoned
Cleggett's bankers--he was surprised to discover that he was buying
about half an acre of Long Island real estate along with her. For that
matter he had thought it a little odd in the first place when he had been
directed to a real estate agent as the owner of the craft. But as he knew
very little about business, and nothing at all about ships, he assumed
that perhaps it was quite the usual thing for real estate dealers to buy
and sell ships abutting on the coast of Long Island.
"I had only intended to buy the vessel," said Cleggett. "I don't know
that I'll be able to use the land."
Mr. Goldberg looked at Cleggett with a slight start, as if he were not
sure that he had heard aright, and opened his mouth as if to say
something. But nothing came of it--not just then, at least. When the last
signature had been written, and Clegget's check had been folded by Mr.
Goldberg's plump, bejeweled fingers and put into Mr. Goldberg's
pocketbook, Mr. Goldberg remarked:
"You say you can't use the ship?"
"No; the land. I'm surprised to find that the land goes with the ship."
"Why, it doesn't," said Mr. Goldberg. "It's the ship that goes with the
land. She was on the land when I bought the plot, and I just left her
there. Nobody's paid any attention to her for years."
The words "on the land" grated on Cleggett.

"You mean on the water, don't you?"
"In the mud, then," suggested Mr. Goldberg.
"But she'll sail all right," said Cleggett.
"I suppose if she was decorated up with sails and things she'd sail.
Figuring on sailing her anywhere in particular?"
"Subtly irritated, Cleggett answered: "Oh, no, no! Not anywhere in
particular!"
"Going to live on her this summer?--Outdoor sleeping room, and all
that?"
"I'm thinking of it."
"You could turn her into a house boat easy enough. I had a friend who
turned an old barge like that into a house boat and had a lot of fun with
her."
"Barge?" Cleggett rose and buttoned his coat; the conversation was
somehow growing more and more distasteful to him. "You wouldn't
call the Jasper B. a BARGE, would you?"
"Well, you wouldn't call her a YACHT, would you?" said Mr.
Goldberg.
"Perhaps not," admitted Cleggett, "perhaps not. She's more like a bark
than a yacht."
"A bark? I dunno. Always thought a bark was bigger. A scow's more
her size, ain't it?"
"Scow?" Cleggett frowned. The Jasper B. a scow! "You mean a
schooner, don't you?"
"Schooner?" Mr. Goldberg grinned good-naturedly at his departing
customer. "A kind of a schooner-scow, huh?"

"No, sir, a schooner!" said Cleggett, reddening, and turning in the
doorway. "Understand me, Mr. Goldberg, a schooner, sir! A schooner!"
And standing with a frown on his face until every vestige of the smile
had died from Mr. Goldberg's lips, Cleggett repeated once more: "A
schooner, Mr. Goldberg!"
"Yes, sir--there's no doubt of it--a schooner, Mr. Cleggett," said Mr.
Goldberg, turning pale and backing away from the door.
The ordinary man inspects a house or a horse first and buys it, or fails
to buy it, afterward; but genius scorns conventions; Cleggett was not an
ordinary man; he often moved straight towards his object by inspiration;
great poets and great adventurers share this faculty; Cleggett paid for
the Jasper B. first and went back to inspect his purchase later.
The vessel lay about two miles from the center of Fairport. He could
get within half a mile of