— told me there’s every element in sea water if you can get it out. Leastways, that’s how I account for it-she was wood when I bought ‘er. Later on you’ll understand better why I say that-she could do some funny things.
“The next thing that made me sit up and take notice was the amount of paint it took. I’ve painted hundreds of boats in my time, and know to the pint what’s needed. Well I had to send to town for more; I was shy about five gallons. Come to think about it, she did look big for a fortyfooter, so I got out a tape and laid it on ‘er. She was fifty- eight feet over all! And she’d done it so gradual I never even noticed!
“But — to get along. I painted ‘er nice and white, with a red bottom and a catchy green trim, along the rail and canopy. We polished ‘er bright — work and titivated ‘er generally. She did look nice, and new as you please — and in a sense she was, with the bottom I was tellin’ you about. You’d a died a-laughin’ though, if you’d been with me the next day, when we come over here to Dockport. The weather was fine and the pier was full of summer people. As soon as we come up close, they began cheerin’ and callin’ out to me how swell the Betsy B looked in ‘er new colors. Well, there was nothin’ out of the way about that. I went on uptown and ‘tended to my business, came back after a while, and we shoved off.
“But do you think that blamed boat would leave there right away? No, sir! Like I said, lately I’d taken to climbin’ in the stern sheets and givin’ ‘er her head. But that day, we hadn’t got much over a hundred yards beyond the end of the pier, when what does she do but put ‘er rudder over hard and come around in an admiral’s sweep with wide-open throttle, and run back the length of the pier. She traipsed up and down a coupla times before I tumbled to what was goin’ on. It was them admirin’ people on the dock and the summer tourists cheerin’ that went to ‘er head.
“All the time, people was yellin’ to me to get my wild boat outa there, and the constable threatenin’ to arrest me ‘cause I must be drunk to charge up and down the harbor thataway. You see, she’d gotten so big and fast she was settin’ up plenty of waves with ‘er gallivantin’, and all the small craft in the place was tearin’ at their lines, and bangin’ into each other something terrible. I jumped up for’ard and thumped ‘er on the skull once or twice, ‘fore I could pull ‘er away from there.
“From then on, I kept havin’ more’n more to worry about. There was two things, mainly — her growin’, and the bad habits she took up. When she got to be seventy feet, I come down one mornin’ and found a new bulkhead across the stern section. It was paper-thin, but it was steel, and held up by a mesh of vines an each side. In two days more it was as thick, and looked as natural, as any other part of the boat. The funniest part of that bulkhead, though, was that it put out rivet heads — for appearance, I reckon, because it was as solid as solid could be before that.
“Then, as she got to drawin’ more water, she begun lengthenin’ her ladders. They was a coupla little two-tread ladders — made it easier for the womenfolks gettin’ in and out. I noticed the treads gettin’ thicker V thicker. Then, one day, they just split. Later on, she separated them, evened ‘em up. Those was the kind of little tricks she was up to all the time she was growin’.
“I coulda put up with ‘er growin’ and all — most any feller would be tickled to death to have a launch that’d grow into a steam yacht — only she took to runnin’ away. One mornin’ I went down, and the lines was hangin’ off the dock, parted like they’d been chafed in two. I cranked my motor dory and started out looking for the Betsy B. I sighted ‘er after a while, way out to sea, almost to the horizon.
“Didja ever have to go down in the pasture and bridle a wild colt? Well, it was like that. She waited, foxylike, lyin’ to, until I got almost alongside, and then, doggone if she didn’t take out, hell bent for Halifax, and run until she lost ‘er steam! I never woulda caught ‘er if she hadn’t run out of oil. At that, I had to tow ‘er back, and a mean job it was, with her throwing ‘er rudder first this way and that. I finally got plumb mad and went alongside and whanged the livin’ daylights outa that noodle of hers.
“She was docile enough after that, but sulky, if you can imagine how a sulky steam launch does. I think she was sore over the beatin’ I gave ‘er. She’d pilot ‘erself, all right, but she made some awful bad landin’s when we’d come in here, bumpin’ into the pier at full speed and throwin’ me off my feet when I wasn’t lookin’ for it. It surprised me a lot, ‘cause I knew how proud she was — but I guess she was that anxious to get back at me, she didn’t care what the folks on the dock thought.
“After that first time, she ran away again two or three times, but she allus come back of ‘er own accord — gettin’ in to the dock dead tired, with nothing but a smell of oil in her bunkers. The fuel bill was gettin’ to be a pain.
“The next thing that come to plague me was a fool government inspector. Said he’d heard some bad reports and had come to investigate! Well, he had the Betsy B’s pedigree in a little book, and if you ever saw a worried look on a man, you shoulda seen him while he was comparin’ ‘er dimensions and specifications with what they was s’posed to be. I tried to explain the thing to him — told him he could come any week and find something new. He was short and snappy — kept writin’ in his little book — and said that I was a-goin’ to hear from this.”
“You can see I couldn’t help the way the Betsy B was growin’. But what got my goat was that I told him she had only one boiler, and when we went to look, there was two, side by side, neatly cross- connected, with a stop on each one, and another valve in the main line. I felt sorta hacked over that — it was something I didn’t know, even. She’d done it overnight.
“The inspector feller said I’d better watch my step, and went off, shakin’ his head. He as much as gave me to understand that he thought my Betsy B papers was faked and this here vessel stole. The tough part of that idea, for him, was that there never had been anything like ‘er built. I forgot to tell you that before he got there, she’d grown a steel deck over everything, and was startin’ out in a big way to be a regular ship.
“I was gettin’ to the point when I wished she’d run away and stay. She kept on growin’, splittin’ herself up inside into more and more compartments. That woulda been all right, if there’d been any arrangement I could use, but no human would design such a ship. No doors, or ports, or anything. But the last straw was the lifeboat. That just up and took the cake.
“Don’t get me wrong. It’s only right and proper for a yacht, or anyway, a vessel as big as a yacht, to have a lifeboat. She was a hundred and thirty feet long then, and rated one. But any sailor man would naturally expect it to be a wherry, or a cutter at one outside. But, no, she had to have a steam launch, no less!
“It was a tiny little thing, only about ten feet long, when she let me see it first. She had built a contraption of steel plates on ‘er upper deck that I took to be a spud-locker, only I mighta known she wasn’t interested in spuds. It didn’t have no door, but it did have some louvers for ventilation, looked like. Tell you the truth, I didn’t notice the thing much, ‘cept to see it was there. Then one night, she rips off the platin’, and there, in its skids, was this little steam launch!
“It was all rigged out with the same vine layout that the Betsy B had runnin’ all over ‘er, and had a name on it — the Susan B. It was a dead ringer for the big one, if you think back and remember what she looked like when she come outa the navy yard. Well, when the little un was about three weeks old — and close to twenty feet long, I judge — the Betsy B shoved off one mornin’, in broad daylight, without so much as by-your-leave, and goes around on the outside of my island. She’d tore up so much line gettin’ away for ‘er night jamborees, I’d quit moorin’ ‘er. I knew she’d come back, ‘count o’ my oil tank. She’d hang onto the dock by her own vines.
“I run up to the house and put a glass on ‘er. She was steamin’ along slow, back and forth. Then she reached down with a sorta crane she’d growed and picked that Susan B up, like you’d lift a