“Folks’ll ‘low I’se plum crazy, drivin’ dis yere boat,” he declared, observing with concern that some four feet of the stern projected over the tail-board.  “Ef she topples, I’ll git to heaven quicker’n a bullet.”

When one is shanghaied, however,—­in the hands of buccaneers,—­it is too late to withdraw.  Six shoulders upheld the rear end of the Petrel, others shoved, and Thomas Jefferson’s rickety horse began to move forward in spite of himself.  An expression of sheer terror might have been observed on the old negro’s crinkled face, but his voice was drowned, and we swept out of the alley.  Scarcely had we travelled a block before we began to be joined by all the boys along the line of march; marbles, tops, and even incipient baseball games were abandoned that Saturday morning; people ran out of their houses, teamsters halted their carts.  The breathless excitement, the exaltation I had felt on leaving the alley were now tinged with other feelings, unanticipated, but not wholly lacking in delectable quality,—­concern and awe at these unforeseen forces I had raised, at this ever growing and enthusiastic body of volunteers springing up like dragon’s teeth in our path.  After all, was not I the hero of this triumphal procession?  The thought was consoling, exhilarating.  And here was Nancy marching at my side, a little subdued, perhaps, but unquestionably admiring and realizing that it was I who had created all this.  Nancy, who was the aptest of pupils, the most loyal of followers, though I did not yet value her devotion at its real worth, because she was a girl.  Her imagination kindled at my touch.  And on this eventful occasion she carried in her arms a parcel, the contents of which were unknown to all but ourselves.  At length we reached the muddy shores of Logan’s pond, where two score eager hands volunteered to assist the Petrel into her native element.

Alas! that the reality never attains to the vision.  I had beheld, in my dreams, the Petrel about to take the water, and Nancy Willett standing very straight making a little speech and crashing a bottle of wine across the bows.  This was the content of the mysterious parcel; she had stolen it from her father’s cellar.  But the number of uninvited spectators, which had not been foreseen, considerably modified the programme,—­as the newspapers would have said.  They pushed and crowded around the ship, and made frank and even brutal remarks as to her seaworthiness; even Nancy, inured though she was to the masculine sex, had fled to the heights, and it looked at this supreme moment as though we should have to fight for the Petrel.  An attempt to muster her doughty buccaneers failed; the gunner too had fled,—­Gene Hollister; Ham Durrett and the Ewanses were nowhere to be seen, and a muster revealed only Tom, the fidus Achates, and Grits Jarvis.

“Ah, s’y!” he exclaimed in the teeth of the menacing hordes.  “Stand back, carn’t yer?  I’ll bash yer face in, Johnny.  Whose boat is this?”