JACK’S HOME.
It was an odd home for which Jack was bound. Tucked away in a quiet
corner of the bustling Basin was a sort of ocean graveyard. Here old
ships that had outlived their usefulness lay in peace until they were
sold to be broken up or to be converted into barges or to meet some such
end. Tall-sparred clippers that had once proudly swept the seven seas,
rusty old tramp steamers, looking like the wrecks of marine hoboes that
they were, and venerable ferryboats, all rubbed sides in this salt water
cemetery.
In the farthest part of this quiet corner of the Basin lay a derelict
two-masted schooner of an entirely different type from the other craft.
To begin with, she was much smaller, and then again, instead of
displaying rusty iron sides, or gaping, bleached wooden ones, she was
gayly painted, with red and green hull and bulwarks. Her deck-house
astern was a veritable marine garden, and bright-colored blossoms of all
kinds, even though the season was late, bloomed from numerous boxes
placed on the roof and about the taffrail.
A plank connected this queer-looking craft with the shore, and a column
of smoke ascending from a pipe stuck through the cabin roof, as well as
the curtained windows and general look of neatness, showed that someone
made a home on this retired wanderer of the seas. It bore the name
“Venus” on either side of a dilapidated figurehead, doubtless intended
to represent the goddess of love. The effigy’s one remaining eye sadly
surveyed the deep-sea vagabonds about her.
If the above evidences that the old schooner was used as a habitation
had been lacking, there still would have remained proof that Captain
Toby Ready made his home there, for, nailed to one side of the flowering
cabin-house, was a large sign. On it in sprawling characters of white on
a black background was the following inscription:
CAPTAIN TOBY READY
HERB DOCTOR AND COMMON-SENSE MEDICO-AT-LARGE
TO THE SEA-GOING PROFESSION
All sailors who want to be strong and be steady,
Call ’round to see Capt’n Toby Ready.
Although the Captain is no M.D.,
He’ll fit you out quite _Ready_ for sea.
Here it was that Jack had made his home since the death of his father,
Captain Amos Ready, at sea some years before. His Uncle Toby was thus
left his sole surviving relative, for his mother had died soon after
Jack’s birth. So Jack had lived with his eccentric relative on the old
schooner, bought by Captain Toby many years before as a Snug Harbor.
The boy had helped his uncle compound his liniments and medicines, which
had a ready sale among the old-time ship captains. They had more faith
in Uncle Toby’s remedies than in a whole shipload of doctors. Captain
Toby had, in his day, commanded fast clippers and other sailing vessels.
On long voyages he had amused himself by studying pharmacy till he
believed himself the equal of the entire college of surgeons. At any
rate, if his medicines did no good, at least they never did any harm,
and Jack was kept busy delivering orders for Captain Toby’s compounds to
various vessels.
With such a line of sea-going ancestry, it was natural that the boy
should have a hankering for the sea. But, together with his love of a
seafaring life, Jack had developed another passion, and this was for
wireless telegraphy.
Slung between the two bare masts of the old schooner was the antennæ of
a wireless apparatus, and down below, in his own sanctum in the
schooner’s cabin, Jack had a set of instruments. It was a crude enough
station, which is hardly to be wondered at, considering that the boy had
constructed most of the apparatus himself.
But Jack had a natural leaning for this sort of work, and his home-made
station gave satisfactory results, although he could not catch messages
for more than fifty miles or so. This, however, had not prevented him
from becoming an adept at the key, and his one great ambition was to get
a berth on one of the liners as a wireless operator.
So far, however, he had met with nothing but rebuffs. Wireless men
appeared to be as common as blackberries.
“Come back when you’re older. We can’t use kids,” the head of a big
wireless concern had told him. And that was the substance of most of the
replies to his applications for a job at the work he loved.
That day he had tramped on foot to Manhattan and made his weary round
once more, with the same result. Footsore and thoroughly discouraged, he
had trudged back over Brooklyn Bridge and across town to the region of
the Basin, where the air bristled with masts and derricks, and queer,
foreign, spicy smells issued from the doors of warehouses. He walked,
for the excellent reason that he was young and strong, and every nickel
saved meant a better chance to improve the equipment of his station on
the old _Venus_.
He cheered up a bit as he came in sight of his floating home. He had
grown to like his odd way of life, and he had a sincere affection for
his eccentric old uncle. Determined not to let the old man see his
disappointment, he struck up “Nancy Lee,” whistling it bravely as he
crossed the rickety gangplank, walked over the scrupulously scrubbed
deck and dived down the companionway into one of the strangest homes
that any boy in all New York ever inhabited.
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