Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/58

40 and leaned back against a post. The Ailouros, very white and trim, bobbed at her moorings near by, her gaff squeaking at intervals. The gray dory, closer in, nosed her buoy impatiently.

"This afternoon," said Garth, "we can look at the sea-caverns. Do you love ships, Joan?"

"Not particularly. Why?"

"I do," said Garth. "I'd rather be aboard of a ship than anything in the world. And I want most of all to be a sea-captain. But I couldn't be even a seaman, not possibly. Oh, bother! A disgusting chogset has got the crab ate off my hook without my knowing it!" He reached for the bait cage. "Because," he went on, "I'm not an A. B."

"An A. B.?" said Joan.

"Able-bodied seaman," said Garth, who was letting the crab take a little walk up his sleeve before being put on the hook. "A sea-captain wouldn't take a person on his ship that couldn't even stand up on their own feet. And sailors have to climb into the mizzen-top and everywhere else. They have to have terribly good sea-legs; and I haven't even got very good land ones."

Joan said nothing, because she did not know