and comfortable. I believe they meant her
to last for ever. They had her built composite--iron, teak-wood, and
greenheart, and her scantling was something fabulous. If ever an order
was given for a ship in a spirit of pride this one was. Everything of
the best. The commodore captain of the employ was to command her, and
they planned the accommodation for him like a house on shore under
a big, tall poop that went nearly to the mainmast. No wonder Mrs.
Colchester wouldn't let the old man give her up. Why, it was the best
home she ever had in all her married days. She had a nerve, that woman.

"The fuss that was made while that ship was building! Let's have this a
little stronger, and that a little heavier; and hadn't that other thing
better be changed for something a little thicker. The builders entered
into the spirit of the game, and there she was, growing into the
clumsiest, heaviest ship of her size right before all their eyes,
without anybody becoming aware of it somehow. She was to be 2,000
tons register, or a little over; no less on any account. But see what
happens. When they came to measure her she turned out 1,999 tons and
a fraction. General consternation! And they say old Mr. Apse was so
annoyed when they told him that he took to his bed and died. The old
gentleman had retired from the firm twenty-five years before, and
was ninety-six years old if a day, so his death wasn't, perhaps, so
surprising. Still Mr. Lucian Apse was convinced that his father would
have lived to a hundred. So we may put him at the head of the list. Next
comes the poor devil of a shipwright that brute caught and squashed as
she went off the ways. They called it the launch of a ship, but I've
heard people say that, from the wailing and yelling and scrambling out
of the way, it was more like letting a devil loose upon the river.
She snapped all her checks like pack-thread, and went for the tugs in
attendance like a fury. Before anybody could see what she was up to she
sent one of them to the bottom, and laid up another for three months'
repairs. One of her cables parted, and then, suddenly--you couldn't tell
why--she let herself be brought up with the other as quiet as a lamb.

"That's how she was. You could never be sure what she would be up to
next. There are ships difficult to handle, but generally you can depend
on them behaving rationally. With that ship, whatever you did with her
you never knew how it would end. She was a wicked bea