rst thing it would have done, in
that case, would have been to rename her). For it was in the slack
and hollow of the week--shall we say, the bight of the week?--just
midway between pay-days. But at any rate, thought the club, we can
look her over, which will be an adventure in itself; and we can see
just how people behave when they are buying a schooner, and how
prices are running, so that when the time comes we will be more
experienced. Besides, the club remembered the ship auction scene in
"The Wrecker" and felt that the occasion might be one of most
romantic excitement.

It is hard, it is very hard, to have to admit that the club was
foiled. It had been told that at Cortlandt Street a ferry bound for
Weehawken might be found; but when Endymion and the Secretary
arrived there, at 12:20 o'clock, they learned that the traffic to
Weehawken is somewhat sparse. Next boat at 2:40, said a sign. They
hastened to the Lackawanna ferry at Barclay Street, thinking that by
voyaging to Hoboken and then taking a car they might still be in
time. But it was not to be. When the _Ithaca_ docked, just south of
the huge red-blotched profile of the rusty rotting _Leviathan_, it
was already 1 o'clock. The _Hauppauge_, they said to themselves, is
already on the block, and if we went up there now to study her, we
would be regarded as impostors.

But the club is philosophic. One Adventure is very nearly as good as
another, and they trod ashore at Hoboken with light hearts. It was a
day of tender and untroubled sunshine. They had a queer sensation of
being in foreign lands. Indeed, the tall tragic funnels of the
_Leviathan_ and her motionless derelict masts cast a curious shadow
of feeling over that region. For the great ship, though blameless
herself, seems a thing of shame, a remembrance of days and deeds
that soiled the simple creed of the sea. Her great shape and her
majestic hull, pitiably dingy and stark, are yet plainly conscious
of sin. You see it in every line of her as she lies there, with the
attitude of a great dog beaten and crouching. You wonder how she
would behave if she were towed out on the open bright water of the
river, under that clear sky, under the eyes of other ships going
about their affairs with the self-conscious rectitude and pride that
ships have. For ships are creatures of intense caste and
self-conscious righteousness. They rarely forgive a fallen
sister--even when she has fallen through no fault of her own.