“Hurrah for Captain Edwards!” shouted the boys. Then, as their parents entered the room, Tom cried: “Now what do you say, father? I’ll _bet_ you’re surprised. Isn’t it bully, though!”
Mr. Lathrop coughed and covered his mouth with his handkerchief and Mr. Chester strove to conceal a smile and winked at his friend.
“Well, wonders will never cease,” he replied. “Luck seems to be with you, boys. I hope it will last through the cruise. And it will be some cruise, eh, Lathrop? Mate with a wooden leg, two boys for third mates, an eighty-year-old ship and Heaven alone knows what kind of a crew!”
“Don’t ye fear erbout the crew, Mr. Chester,” spoke up Cap’n Pem. “That’s my job an’ my name ain’t Pem Potter if I don’ git ’em, if I have ter bust open the jail or the poor house an’ take the critters inside.”
The others laughed. “I shouldn’t be surprised if they’d prove better than anything you’ll get elsewhere,” chuckled Mr. Lathrop. “The war’s taken every able-bodied man there is. You won’t find the crowd of park loafers and bums that used to form the bulk of whaling crews.”
“Who said anythin’ erbout able-bodied men?” exclaimed the old seaman. “Jes’ so long’s they’ve got two feet an’ two han’s it’s all I ask. Give me three months at sea with ’em an’ I’ll make whalemen outer anything what’s human. But I reckon I’ll be h’istin’ to’sails an’ gettin’ under way. I gotter be mighty busy from now on.”
Bidding them all good night, and with a parting injunction to the boys to report at the owner’s office and sign articles in the morning, old Cap’n Pem left the house and went stumping down the street on his wooden leg and so overjoyed at the prospect of being once more on a cruise that he broke into a rollicking old chantey.
Now who d’ ye think’s the chief mate o’ her? Blow, boys, blow! A big mu-latter come from Antigua! Blow, my bully boys, blow!
Long after he was out of sight, the boys could hear the chorus wafted to them on the soft night breeze.
The next few weeks were busy ones for the two boys. They signed on as members of the _Hector’s_ crew, although there were difficulties to be overcome in doing that, for they were too young to secure navigators’ licenses. Finally it was arranged that they should be rated as “boys” and as such were entitled to “lays” of 1/100 of the ship’s catch or, in other words, one barrel of oil out of every hundred, for whalers never work for wages, and when all this was attended to, the boys felt like real whalemen. Then, at Captain Edward’s suggestion, they worked daily at the _Hector_, sometimes on the rigging, and still oftener looking after the gear of the whale boats and the supplies which were being rapidly gathered together in readiness for the day when the bark would be ready for sea. It was a never-ending wonder to the boys to find what an enormous quantity of stores were required. As Tom put it, there was enough to supply a city and they could not believe that such a vast amount was necessary. Indeed, when the boys came to total up the lists of stores which they checked off, they discovered there were over seven hundred different articles and that the total cost was nearly one hundred thousand dollars. It seemed a stupendous undertaking to stow all this away and the ship itself appeared a hopeless tangle of rigging, fittings and odds and ends. But gradually order came from chaos. The _Hector_ was spick and span with a fresh coat of paint; her tall, tapering spars rose high above the docks; her massive yards were in place; her rigging taut and well tarred; and, at last one day, a fussy, little tug came hurrying across the harbor, and with a huge, new flag flying from her mizzen gaff and strings of bright bunting everywhere, the stout old ship was towed from her berth and moored in the stream. To the elated boys, standing upon the clean, smooth decks it seemed impossible that the stately vessel whose shining masts and spars towered above their heads could be the same weather-beaten, dingy, dilapidated hulk which for so long had lain upon the mud flat and had formed a playground for them and their comrades.