l in his eyes.

"My name's Abernethy," he suddenly volunteered. "Isaiah Abernethy.
The fellow that owns her is Goldberg. Abraham Goldberg. Real estate
man."

"Cleggett began to get an insight into Mr. Abernethy's peculiar ideas
concerning conversation. A native spirit of independence prevented Mr.
Abernethy from dealing with an interlocutor's remarks in the sequence
that seemed to be desired by the interlocutor. He took a selection of
utterances into his mind, rolled them over together, and replied in
accordance with some esoteric system of his own.

"Where is Mr. Goldberg's office?" asked Cleggett.

"You've come to the proper party to get set right about ships," said
Mr. Abernethy, complacently. "Either you was sent to me by someone that
knows I'm the proper party to set you right about ships, or else you
got an eye in your own head that can recognize a man that comes of a
seafarin' fambly."

"You ARE an old sailor, then? Maybe you are an old skipper? Perhaps
you're one of the retired Long Island sea captains we're always hearing
so much about?"

"So fur as sailin' her around the world is concerned," said Mr.
Abernethy, glancing over the hulk, "if she was fixed up she could be
sailed anywheres--anywheres!"

"What would you call her--a schooner?"

"This here Goldberg," said Mr. Abernethy, "has his office over town
right accost from the railroad depot."

And with that he put his fishing pole over his shoulder and prepared to
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 C