Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/57

Rh found that he, too, was caught by the fascination of this same war game.

“I wish I could see the way I used to,” the old man sighed as he put down his battered  telescope—Billy felt better about him when  he found that he actually had one—and leaned  back in his chair by the door. “That ship that’s going by now is either the Kentucky or  the Alabama and for the life of me I can’t tell which. I’ve watched them off this point for a lot of years now, and never could see so little before. I do believe,”—he spoke as though the suspicion had only just occurred to him—“that I’m getting old!”

A week ago Billy might have felt inclined to laugh at any one who was so bowed down  with years but who seemed so surprised on  discovering the fact. Now, however, he had become too fast a friend of the Captain’s for that. A man who could endure pain as unfalteringly as Captain Saulsby did, who, although nearly a cripple, could still work for his scanty living and never complain of the toil and hardship, such a person was not to be  laughed at.

Moreover, on the Captain’s knee was the model of the boat that was to teach Billy