“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 a practical knowledge of craft in general Ralph was not slow to point out the defects of ours.  Tom and I defended her passionately.

Ralph was not a romanticist.  He was a born leader, excelling at organized games, exercising over boys the sort of fascination that comes from doing everything better and more easily than others.  It was only during the progress of such enterprises as this affair of the Petrel that I succeeded in winning their allegiance; bit by bit, as Tom’s had been won, fanning their enthusiasm by impersonating at once Achilles and Homer, recruiting while relating the Odyssey of the expedition in glowing colours.  Ralph always scoffed, and when I had no scheme on foot they went back to him.  Having surveyed the boat and predicted calamity, he departed, leaving a circle of quaint and youthful figures around the Petrel in the shed:  Gene Hollister, romantically inclined, yet somewhat hampered by a strict parental supervision; Ralph’s cousin Ham Durrett, who was even then a rather fat boy, good-natured but selfish; Don and Harry Ewan, my second cousins; Mac and Nancy Willett and Sam and Sophy McAlery.  Nancy was a tomboy, not to be denied, and Sophy her shadow.  We held a council, the all-important question of which was how to get the Petrel to the water, and what water to get her to.  The river was not to be thought of, and Blackstone Lake some six miles from town.  Finally, Logan’s mill-pond was decided on,—­a muddy sheet on the outskirts of the city.  But how to get her to Logan’s mill-pond?  Cephas was at length consulted.  It turned out that he had a coloured friend who went by the impressive name of Thomas Jefferson Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver), who was in the express business; and who, after surveying the boat with some misgivings,—­for she was ten feet long,—­finally consented to transport her to “tide-water” for the sum of two dollars.  But it proved that our combined resources only amounted to a dollar and seventy-five cents.  Ham Durrett never contributed to anything.  On this sum Thomas Jefferson compromised.

Saturday dawned clear, with a stiff March wind catching up the dust into eddies and whirling it down the street.  No sooner was my father safely on his way to his office than Thomas Jefferson was reported to be in the alley, where we assembled, surveying with some misgivings Thomas Jefferson’s steed, whose ability to haul the Petrel two miles seemed somewhat doubtful.  Other difficulties developed; the door in the back of the shed proved to be too narrow for our ship’s beam.  But men embarked on a desperate enterprise are not to be stopped by such trifles, and the problem was solved by sawing out two adjoining boards.  These were afterwards replaced with skill by the ship’s carpenter, Able Seaman Grits Jarvis.  Then the Petrel by heroic efforts was got into the wagon, the seat of which had been removed, old Thomas Jefferson perched himself precariously in the bow and protestingly gathered up his rope-patched reins.