Little by little as I wove all this into personal
adventures soon to be realized, Tom forgot the snowballs and the
maddened grocery-men who chased him around the block; while Grits would
occasionally stop sawing and cry out:--"Ah, s'y!" frequently adding that
he would be G--d--d.

The cold woodshed became a chantry on the New England coast, the alley
the wintry sea soon to embrace our ship, the saw-horses--which stood
between a coal-bin on one side and unused stalls filled with rubbish
and kindling on the other--the ways; the yard behind the lattice fence
became a backwater, the flapping clothes the sails of ships that took
refuge there--on Mondays and Tuesdays. Even my father was symbolized
with unparalleled audacity as a watchful government which had, up to the
present, no inkling of our semi-piratical intentions! The cook and the
housemaid, though remonstrating against the presence of Grits, were
friendly confederates; likewise old Cephas, the darkey who, from my
earliest memory, carried coal and wood and blacked the shoes, washed the
windows and scrubbed the steps.

One afternoon Tom went to work....

The history of the building of the good ship Petrel is similar to that
of all created things, a story of trial and error and waste. At last,
one March day she stood ready for launching. She had even been caulked;
for Grits, from an unknown and unquestionably dubious source, had
procured a bucket of tar, which we heated over afire in the alley and
smeared into every crack. It was natural that the news of such a feat
as we were accomplishing should have leaked out, that the "yard" should
have been visited from time to time by interested friends, some of whom
came to admire, some to scoff, and all to speculate. Among the scoffers,
of course, was Ralph Hambleton, who stood with his hands in his pockets
and cheerfully predicted all sorts of dire calamities. Ralph was always
a superior boy, tall and a trifle saturnine and cynical, with an
amazing self-confidence not wholly due to the wealth of his father, the
iron-master. He was older than I.

"She won't float five minutes, if you ever get her to the water," was
his comment, and in this he was supported on general principles by Julia
and Russell Peters. Ralph would have none of the Petrel, or of the South
Seas either; but he wanted,--so he said,--"to be in at the death." The
Hambletons were one of the few families who at that time went to the sea
for the summer, and from