Bill Lacey, the handsome young rigger to whom the remark was addressed, leaned over the sloop's rail, scanned every bolt in her plates, glanced up at the standing rigging, tried it with his hand as if it were a tight-rope, and with a satisfied air answered, "Them plates is all right, Marrows,--it's her b'iler that's a-worryin' me. What do you say, Caleb?" turning to Caleb West, a broad-shouldered, grizzled man in a sou'wester, who was mending a leak in a diving-dress, the odor of the burning cement in a pan beside him mingling with the savory smell of frying pork coming up from the galley.
"Wall, I ain't said, Billy," replied Caleb in a cheery voice, stroking his bushy gray beard. "Them as don't know better keep shet."
There was a loud laugh at the young rigger's expense, in which everybody except Lacey and Caleb joined. Lacey's face hardened under the thrust, while Caleb still smiled, a quaint expression overspreading his features,--one that often came when something pleased him, and which by its sweetness showed how little venom lay behind his reproofs.
"These 'ere sloops is jes' like women," said George Nickles, the cook, a big, oily man, with his sleeves rolled up above his elbows, a greasy apron about his waist. He was dipping a bucket overboard. "Ye can't tell nothin' about 'em till ye tries 'em."
The application of the simile not being immediately apparent,--few of Nickles' similes ever were,--nobody answered. Lacey stole a look at Nickles and then at Caleb, to see if the shot had been meant for him, and meeting the diver's unconscious clear blue eyes, looked seaward again.
Lonny Bowles, a big derrickman from Noank quarries, in a red shirt, discolored on the back with a pink Y where his suspenders had crossed, now moved nearer and joined in the discussion.
"She kin h'ist any two on 'em, an' never wet 'er deck combin's. I seen these Cape Ann sloops afore, when we wuz buildin' Stonin'ton breakwater. Ye wouldn't believe they had it in 'em till ye see 'em work. Her b'iler's all right."
"Don't you like the sloop, Caleb?" said Sanford, who had been listening. "Don't you think she'll do her work?" he continued, moving a rebellious leg of the rubber dress to sit the closer.