called it was an old volume smelling of a hundred voyages very solid and very like the bible but with accounts of battles and and they read it nearly from cover to cover otherwise was a silent little body he would not utter a word for three days on end sometimes though he played listened to the songs and laughed at the stories when they tried to stir him up he would answer i don t wish to seem but it is because i have nothing to say my head feels quite empty i ve almost forgotten my name he would turn to uncle with an expectant smile captains courageous why would shout you me next no � never would say shutting his lips firmly of course he would repeat over and over sometimes it was uncle who forgot and told him he was or rich or but was equally content � till next time he was always very tender with whom he pitied both as a lost child and as a lunatic and when saw that liked the boy he relaxed too was not an amiable person he esteemed it his business to keep the boys in order and the first time in fear and trembling on a still day managed to up to the main dan was behind him ready to help he esteemed it his duty to hang s big sea boots up there � a sight of shame and derision to the nearest with took no liberties not even when the old man dropped direct orders and treated him like the rest of the crew to don t you want to do so and so and guess you d better and so forth there was something about the clean shaven lips and the corners captains courageous of the eyes that was to young blood showed him the meaning of the and pricked which he said laid over any government publication whatsoever led him pencil in hand from berth to berth over the whole string of banks � le have western st green and grand � talking meantime taught him too the principle on which the was worked in this dan for he had inherited a head for figures and the notion of stealing information from one glimpse of the sullen bank sun appealed to all his keen wits for other sea matters his age him as said he should have begun when he was ten dan could bait up or lay his hand on any rope in the dark and at a pinch when uncle had a sore on his palm could dress down by sense of touch he could steer in anything short of half a gale from the feel of the wind on his face the we re here just when she needed it these things he did as as he about the or made his a part of his own will and body captains courageous but he could not communicate his knowledge to still there was a good deal of general information flying about the on stormy days when they lay up in the or sat on the cabin while spare eye leads and rings rolled and rattled in the pauses of the talk spoke of voyages in the of great she slain beside their young of death agonies on the black tossing seas and blood that forty feet in the air of boats smashed to of patent that went off wrong end first and the trembling of cutting in and boiling down and that terrible of when twelve hundred men were made on the ice in three days � wonderful tales all true but more wonderful still were his stories of the and how they argued and reasoned on their private deep down below the long jack s tastes ran more to the supernatural he held them silent with ghastly stories of the yo on beach that mock and lonely of sand and who were never properly buried of hidden treasure on captains courageous fire island guarded by the spirits of s men of ships that sailed in the fog straight over of that harbor in where no one but a stranger will lie at anchor twice in a certain place because of a dead crew who row alongside at midnight with the anchor in the bow of their old fashioned boat whistling � not calling but whistling � for the soul of the man who broke their rest had a notion that the east coast of his native land from mount desert south was chiefly by people who took their horses there in the summer and entertained in country houses with floors and he laughed at the ghost tales � not as much as he would have done a month before � but ended by sitting still and shuddering tom dealt with his interminable trip round the horn on the old in the days with a navy more extinct than the � the navy that passed away in the great war he told them how red hot shot are dropped into a cannon a of wet clay between them and the how they and when they strike wood and how the little captains courageous ship boys of the miss jim buck water over them and shouted to the fort to try again and he told tales of � long weeks of swaying at anchor varied only by the departure and return of that had used up their coal there was no change for the sailing ships of and cold � cold that kept two hundred men night and day and at the ice on cable blocks and when the was as red hot as the shot and men drank by the bucket tom had no use for steam his service closed when that thing was comparatively new he admitted that it was a invention in time of peace but looked for the day when sails should come back again on ten 