Ralph Henry Barbour

Four Afloat Ralph Henry Barbour

Publisher Marketing: "She's a pu-pu-pu-pu--!" "Quite so, Tommy," said Dan soothingly, "but don't excite yourself." "--pu-pu-peach!" "Oh, all right!" laughed Nelson. "I thought you were trying to call her a puppy. What do you think of her, Bob?" "Best ever," answered Bob promptly and quietly. They were standing, the four of them-"to say nothing of the dog," which in this case was a wide-awake wire-haired terrier-on the edge of a wharf overlooking a small slip in which, in spite of the fact that it was the last week in June and many of the winter tenants had been hauled out and placed in commission, a dozen or more boats lay huddled. There were many kinds of pleasure craft there, from an eighty-foot yawl, still housed over, to a tiny sixteen-foot launch which rejoiced in the somewhat inappropriate name of Formidable. Beyond the slip was another wharf, a marine railway, masts and spars, and, finally, the distant rise of Beacon Hill, crowned with 2 the glittering, golden dome of the State House. To their right, beyond the end of the jutting wharf, Boston Harbor lay blue and inviting in the morning sunlight. From the boat yard came the sound of mallet and caulking iron, and the steady puff-puff, puff-puff of the machine-shop exhaust. Nearer at hand a graceful sloop was being hurriedly overhauled, and the slap-slap of the paint brush and the rasp of the scraper were mingled. The air was pleasantly redolent of fresh paint and new wood-oak and cedar and pine-and the salty breath of the ocean. And to the four boys all these things appealed strongly, since they were on the verge of a summer cruise and were beginning to feel quite nautical.