d I defended her
passionately.

Ralph was not a romanticist. He was a born leader, excelling at organized
games, exercising over boys the sort of fascination that comes from doing
everything better and more easily than others. It was only during the
progress of such enterprises as this affair of the Petrel that I
succeeded in winning their allegiance; bit by bit, as Tom's had been won,
fanning their enthusiasm by impersonating at once Achilles and Homer,
recruiting while relating the Odyssey of the expedition in glowing
colours. Ralph always scoffed, and when I had no scheme on foot they went
back to him. Having surveyed the boat and predicted calamity, he
departed, leaving a circle of quaint and youthful figures around the
Petrel in the shed: Gene Hollister, romantically inclined, yet somewhat
hampered by a strict parental supervision; Ralph's cousin Ham Durrett,
who was even then a rather fat boy, good-natured but selfish; Don and
Harry Ewan, my second cousins; Mac and Nancy Willett and Sam and Sophy
McAlery. Nancy was a tomboy, not to be denied, and Sophy her shadow. We
held a council, the all-important question of which was how to get the
Petrel to the water, and what water to get her to. The river was not to
be thought of, and Blackstone Lake some six miles from town. Finally,
Logan's mill-pond was decided on,--a muddy sheet on the outskirts of the
city. But how to get her to Logan's mill-pond? Cephas was at length
consulted. It turned out that he had a coloured friend who went by the
impressive name of Thomas Jefferson Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver), who
was in the express business; and who, after surveying the boat with some
misgivings,--for she was ten feet long,--finally consented to transport
her to "tide-water" for the sum of two dollars. But it proved that our
combined resources only amounted to a dollar and seventy-five cents. Ham
Durrett never contributed to anything. On this sum Thomas Jefferson
compromised.

Saturday dawned clear, with a stiff March wind catching up the dust into
eddies and whirling it down the street. No sooner was my father safely on
his way to his office than Thomas Jefferson was reported to be in the
alley, where we assembled, surveying with some misgivings Thomas
Jefferson's steed, whose ability to haul the Petrel two miles seemed
somewhat doubtful. Other difficulties developed; the door in the back of
the shed proved to be too narrow for our ship's beam. But men embarked on
a d