Part 2

“‘Very well, sir,’ said Taffy, touching his cap. And a few minutes later a great quivering and trembling went through the ship as the anchor chains slid out; and then they lay quiet, rocking gently on the waves, and everybody went to bed except the Lookout and the Captain and the Mate.

“No one knows just what was said in the Captain’s cabin, or whether he or Taffy made the suggestion, but this is what happened:—

“The next morning, just before sunrise, the Mate stepped out of his cabin and walked for’ard. He leaned over the fo’c’s’le hatch, which stood open, and called, ‘Bos’n!’

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ answered the Bos’n from below. The next minute he stood beside Taffy on the deck.

“‘Assemble ships!’ ordered the Mate.

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ said the Bos’n again. He had a whistle hanging from a string around his neck that he used for a signal to the sailors, but he didn’t use that now. Instead he took from a pocket inside his shirt another whistle. It was no larger than the first, but when he put it to his lips and blew,—the sound was so high and clear it seemed as if it must go all around the world! And before very long,—just as if it had gone, and was broken up on the way, and was coming back in little pieces,—from every direction came a faint, thin little answering whistle.

“And then the Captain and the Mate and the second Mate and the four Quartermasters and the Bos’n and the sailors and the cook and the cabin boy—who were all on deck by this time—saw appearing, one by one, on the horizon, little specks, that as they came nearer, showed themselves to be ships of all descriptions,—schooners and brigs and barkentines and barks and frigates and luggers and full-rigged ships. And every time one of the little specks appeared the Lookout would call from the masthead, ‘Sail ho!’ and the Captain would say, ‘Where away?’ and the Lookout would answer, ‘Two points on the weather-bow,’ or wherever it happened to be.

“All the morning long, all these different kinds of ships tacked and jibed and went about and missed stays and luffed and beat to wind’ard, and in all these ways drew nearer and nearer, until, just as the Quartermaster made it seven bells, the last one of them hove to, and the Jane Ellen lay surrounded by fifty-two ships of every kind you ever saw,—but none so fine as she!

“Then from the peak of the Jane Ellen fluttered a string of little flags,—red and yellow and white and green,—and the little flags said to the captains of the other ships, ‘Will you please come aboard the Jane Ellen?’ Then from every ship a boat put out, and was rowed to the side of the Jane Ellen, where a rope-ladder was let down to the water’s edge. Her Captain stood on the deck by the rail, with the Mate standing by, and shook hands with every captain as he came over the side, and said, ‘I’m glad to see you, sir!’

“When they all had come aboard and were assembled on the hurricane deck the Captain made them a speech, while the Mate went and told the cook to ‘look alive with lunch, to have it ready when the “Old Man” gets through with the powwow!’

“This is the Captain’s speech: ‘I suppose you wonder why I called you together? Perhaps you noticed a big mar on the Jane Ellen’s bows, where the good new paint is scraped off?’ All the other captains nodded. ‘That happened last night,’ said our Captain. ‘We ran on Porpoise Rock; and my quartermaster, Nelson, said he ran a-foul of it because he didn’t make enough allowance for the stars moving. I’ve got as good quartermasters as any ship afloat, but I know—you all know—that kind of thing happens to all of us.’ The captains nodded again. ‘The trouble isn’t with the man at the wheel, it’s just here,’—and the Captain struck the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other several times, and they all looked at it to see what it was,—‘He hasn’t the right kind of stars to steer by!’ The captains all looked up at the sky, and blinked, because it was just noon and the sun was very bright, and then looked at one another, and one of them said, ‘What kind of stars could we have? We’ve got all there are.’

“‘Oh, these _stars_ are all right, but they move about so! Night after night they go ’round and around! A man is almost too old to take his trick at the wheel before he learns to make allowance for it. Now, we’ve been fair and honest, and we’ve steered by these stars—and sworn by them—as long as there have been ships and sailors, and the Star People ought to do something to help us out. So I propose to send some one to put it to them fairly, and see if they can’t keep one star always in the same place. Then we could start from that, and know where we were.’

“‘How are you going to get up there?’ asked the same captain who had spoken before.

“‘We’ll show you after lunch,’ said the Captain of the Jane Ellen. ‘That is, if you all agree?’

“The other captain asked, ‘Do you all agree?’ and they all nodded.

“Then the other captain said, ‘Three cheers for the Skipper!’ and fifty-_one_ captains shouted, ‘Hurrah!’ three times. So that was settled, and they went down to the cabin for lunch.”

“What did they have?” asked the Kitten.

“Plum duff,—full of raisins,” said the Princess.

“Did they like it?” asked Pat.

“You’d have thought so if you’d seen them. Every one took a second helping until Taffy was almost discouraged. He was in a hurry to be through. But at last they were finished and back on the deck to hear what the Captain had to propose.

“‘Now,’ said the Captain, ‘we shall have to borrow your masts and some anchors.’ They nodded, and the Captain called; ‘Mr. Morganwg! You may set to work.’

“‘At once, sir,’ said Taffy, and called, ‘Bos’n!’

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ said the Bos’n, running up.

“‘Call the men,’ ordered the Mate.

“The Bos’n blew his ordinary whistle, and at the same time the captains began to go over the side of the Jane Ellen to return to their own ships. They all looked very smiling and good-natured but one man,—the one who hadn’t cheered.

“When it came his turn to say good-by, he just humped up his shoulder and growled, and then he turned around and said, very loud, ‘The rest of you can do as you like, but I’m blowed if you take _my_ mainmast for any such foolishness!’ Then he went down the side of the ship and was rowed away.

“The captains who heard him looked perfectly disgusted, and Taffy said to his captain, ‘Shall I attend to him, sir?’

“‘Yes!’ said the Captain, and they all nodded.

So, before they did anything else, Taffy and the Bos’n and his men went to the rude Skipper’s ship (it was a brigantine, the Wandering Willie), and they set all the sails, and tied the ropes in hard knots instead of just belaying them, as every one knows is seamanlike. Then they weighed the anchor, and got off as quickly as they could,—and off went the Wandering Willie! And it had gone only a little way when the wind changed, and the Skipper shouted in the roughest voice, ‘Ease ’er off!’ And when the sailors tried, they couldn’t untie the knots, and the ship keeled over, farther and farther, until, all at once, she turned bottom up, and every one had to swim back to the other ships! The crew were glad of it, because they were better off; and the rude captain, who couldn’t swim very well, had to be thankful to be pulled aboard and allowed to ship before the mast on the Jane Ellen. And he learned in time to be a very good sailor.”

“That was just right for him,” said Pat.

“That’s what I think,” said the Princess. “But while all this was happening, the work was going on on all the ships. The first thing they did, they brought twenty-four large anchors, and anchored the Jane Ellen, twelve on a side and her own two at the bows, so she couldn’t even wabble. Then they drew up all the other ships in a long line, one after another, with a space between, and unstepped the mainmast of every ship. When every ship had her mainmast lying on the deck, beginning with the Jane Ellen, they spliced them all together, the top of one to the bottom of the next one. It took them all that afternoon and part of the next morning to do it.

“Meanwhile, other sailors had brought twenty mizzen-masts to the Jane Ellen, and, one after another, they were carried up her mizzen-mast and spliced to the top of the one below. When they were all in place some hoisting-tackle was made fast to the top, pulley-ropes were run through it and carried out over the other ships and fastened to the spliced mainmasts, about a third of their length away.

“By this time it was four bells in the afternoon, and everybody was pretty tired, so the Captain said they might rest for an hour, all except the cook, and he had to serve out grog. So all the seamen had their grog, and lay around on the deck and looked up at the tall mizzen-mast and the hoisting-tackle, and thought what a good captain they had, and that the Jane Ellen was the finest ship afloat.

“Six bells had hardly finished striking when the Mate jumped down from the rail where he had been sitting, and called, ‘Bos’n!’

“The Bos’n sprang up and said, ‘Ay, ay, sir!’

“‘Pipe the men aft,’ ordered the Mate.

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ said the Bos’n again, and blew his whistle.

“The seamen all jumped up nimbly and came trooping aft to the foot of the mizzen-mast. There some of them brought a winch, and some more arranged the pulley-ropes and passed them around the winch, and carried them fore and aft, and arranged more tackle around the heel of the mainmast, and did a great many things to them that I don’t know anything about, but the Mate did, for he directed it all, without stopping even to think. And the Captain came and looked on, and he looked as proud as if he had done it himself!

“At last everything seemed to be done, and Taffy asked, ‘Are you all ready, Bos’n?’

“‘Just waiting for Tom Green to sing the chanty, sir,’ said he. And in a minute, Tom Green came.

“He wasn’t a very large sailor, but he had one blue and one brown eye, and red and blue anchors and ships and stars and a weeping-willow tattooed on his arms; and he wore his sleeves rolled up high to show them. And he stood up on a water cask in the stern, and the sailors all stood ready, in long lines, with the ropes in their hands.

“Then the Mate said, ‘Are you ready, Bos’n?’ and the Bos’n said, ‘Ay, ay, sir!’

“‘Then, hoist away!’ ordered the Mate.

“The Bos’n blew his whistle, and Tom Green began to sing the chanty, and this is how it began:—

(_Tom_) “We have left our happy home, On the ocean for to roam.”

(_Sailors_) “Yeo, ho! Away we go! Round the world and back again.— Yeo—heave-_ho_!”

(_Tom_) “And our wives and sweethearts dear, May not see for more’n a year.”

(_Sailors_) “Fair winds! White sails flowing free, Blue water ’neath our keel,— That’s the life for _me_!”

The Princess laughed with her eyes at the Others, while she held the last long note until it seemed to die away in the woods, and they laughed back, but they didn’t speak, and she went on, quite seriously:—

“I give you only one verse of it, but there were ninety-three, and it told all about their life on the ocean wave and what they wanted to do, and Tom Green made most of it up as he went along,—so perhaps he worked as hard as any of them!

“Now, every time when they sung the refrain, the sailors all pulled together on the ropes, and little by little—inch by inch, almost—the great long mainmast rose in the air. And on all the other ships the sailors stood watching, because they had nothing else to do, and they all joined in the chanty, and the sound of it mounted up through the clouds. There never was a chanty like it since the world began!

“It had been bright, sunshiny weather when the work began, but all the afternoon the clouds had gathered until the sky was completely overcast, like a solid roof of gray, and when the mast rose up, about one quarter of it pierced the clouds. At last it stood, straight and tall, the heel firmly fixed on the step above the deck of the Jane Ellen, and the top hidden from sight in the cloud roof, and a shout went up that must have reached the heavens! Then everybody drew a long breath, and went to rest, and waited for it to be quite dark.”

The Princess paused. “Perhaps you, yourselves, would like to stop and hear the rest another time?” she suggested. But they were sure they wouldn’t. So, after only a moment, while Pat changed to another place, she went on:—

“When it was time, and every one was on deck (the other captains had come aboard again), the Captain of the Jane Ellen looked up at the great tall mast, going up and up until it went out of sight in the clouds, and he said to the other captains, ‘Whom shall I send up to talk to the Star People?’ And the other captains said, very decidedly, ‘You’ll have to send an able seaman.’

“So the Bos’n picked out the very best able seaman there was, and he stepped out before the captains. He swayed his body when he walked, and hitched up his trousers, and he could dance a hornpipe better than any man aboard, and wrap his leg four times around a rope when he climbed. He was just the man to climb to the top of that great tall mast.

“The Captain looked at the Able Seaman, and said, ‘You go aloft there; and when you get to the top, you tell the Star People you want to talk to their captain. Do you understand?’

“The Able Seaman pulled his forelock and said, ‘Ay, ay, sir,’ and the Captain went on: ‘You tell him, we want _one star_ that we can depend on, to steer by. We’ve steered by them ever since there were ships, and they move about all the time, and we can’t stand it any longer! We’ve done the fair thing by them, and now they can do the fair thing by us, or by Jiminy! we’ll throw the whole lot of ’em over, and they’ll be out of a job!—Do you understand?’

“The Able Seaman pulled his forelock and said, ‘Ay, ay, sir.’

“‘Then, up you go!’ and the Able Seaman turned away and came to the foot of the great tall mast.

“There were two ropes that ran from the top to the bottom. He wound his leg four times around one of them, and took hold of the other and began to climb. And everybody watched him go up and up, and grow smaller and smaller until he wasn’t nearly so large as a fly. And then he went clear out of sight in the clouds. And they couldn’t have seen him at all, any of the way, if they hadn’t thrown a strong light on him as he went up.

“Then—though there was nothing to see, and their necks ached—nobody could take his eyes from the spot where he disappeared. And before very long they saw a little speck, smaller than a fly, appear again and come down the great tall mast,—so tall it took thirty-eight minutes to come down from the place where it entered the cloud. The captains hardly could wait for him to get down.

“‘What did you find?’ asked the Captain.

“‘A lot of Star People—I dunno who they was,’ answered the Able Seaman.

“‘Well,—what did they say?’

“‘They wanted to know what that singin’ was, this afternoon.’

“‘But what did they say about the _star_?’

“‘I didn’t ask ’em.’

“‘Didn’t ask them!’

“‘No. I come back to ask what to say about the singin’. You didn’t tell me that.’

“‘_Thunder!_’ said the Captain. ‘Did you come clear down here to ask me that? You get back, as quick as ever you can, and tell them what I said. Of course you’re to answer a civil question!’

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ said the Able Seaman without winking; and he climbed up the mast again. And all the captains watched him as before, only their necks ached a little harder.

“He was gone a trifle longer, and then back he came. It only took thirty-six minutes this time, because he was more used to it (beside the time it took to go up, of course, and the time he was above the clouds).

“‘Well?’ said the Captain.

“‘I tol’ ’em it was the chanty. And I asked to speak to the captain, an’ a big man said they hadn’t no captain,—they’re a Republic.’

“‘Then what?’ asked the Captain, as the Able Seaman paused.

“‘Then, I didn’t know who to ask for,—so I—’

“‘Thunder-_ation_!’ cried the Captain. ‘Did you come clear down here again, to ask me _that_? You go back—quick—and don’t you come down again till you finish your errand!’ And the Able Seaman said, ‘Ay, ay, sir,’—and all the other captains looked at each other and said, ‘_Thunderation!_’ or some other word that meant the same thing.

“Then the Able Seaman climbed up the mast again, and nearly all of them watched him. But some of the captains who had short necks couldn’t watch another minute, until one of them lay down on his back on the deck; then a good many of them did the same thing, and were more comfortable.

“And this time he was gone a long time—so long, the Captain was just going to send up the second-best able seaman to see what was the matter, when they saw him coming down. It took a little longer, because the leg of his trousers caught in the third twist of the rope, and he had to unwrap his leg and twist it around again. It took forty-one minutes this time, and it seemed _forever_ to the captains! Three or four of them waited at the foot of the mast, and caught at him as he slid down.

“‘What did they say?’—‘Will they do it?’—they asked eagerly.

“The Able Seaman breathed hard. ‘You wait a minute—till I get—my breath.’

“They waited. Finally the Captain said: ‘Now?’ and the Able Seaman pulled his forelock and said: ‘I tol’ ’em, sir,—just as you said,—an’ they all talked an’ talked—’

“‘_Who_ talked?’ asked the Captain.

“‘I dunno their names. I ain’t no navigator.—There was the big man, an’ a woman sittin’ in a chair, an’ another man, and a feller with a head in his hand—all snakes!—an’ a big dragon kep’ pokin’ his blame head in all the time,—an’ some more people; an’ they all talked to onc’t.’

“‘What did they say? Will they give us the star?’

“‘I can’t make out,’ said the Able Seaman. ‘I guess they was willin’, but they didn’t seem to know what to do, and they was quarrelin’ about who’d do it.’

“The Captain looked around. ‘Mr. Morganwg!’ he said. (The Mate was there almost before he spoke.) ‘It’s no use. You’ll have to go.’

“‘Certainly, sir,’ said Taffy, and his eyes shone when he said it, and he turned and walked to the foot of the mast.

“He weighed two hundred and eleven pounds, but he walked so lightly his feet seemed hardly to touch the deck; and when he sprang into the ropes and began to go up the mast, he made the Able Seaman look like an apprentice! And the captains all stood and watched him, and they were so pleased and so sure it would be all right, their necks almost forgot to ache.”

“He wanted to go,” said Phyllisy, when the Princess paused.

“He’d better have gone before, and saved all that time,” observed Pat.

But the Princess said nothing for a moment. Then she went on with the story: “Up and up climbed Taffy, higher and higher, until it seemed to him a thick cloud came down and wrapped him about so he could see only a few feet ahead of him. But he knew it didn’t come down at all. It was he who had climbed up into the clouds. So he kept steadily on, and very soon it began to grow thin; and as he came out of it he saw a sight that almost took his breath away, and made him lose his hold of the rope. But he wouldn’t even look, but kept climbing on until he reached the top of the fifty-second mast, and with one leg wrapped easily around one rope, and his elbow resting on the gilt ball on the top of the mast, and his chin in his hand, he was as comfortable as a boy in an apple tree. Now he had time to look about him,—and he could take it, for the Star People were so busy talking among themselves they hadn’t seen him come.

“Two persons seemed to be the centre of the group. One was a tall, splendid man with a sword on his belt and a shaggy lion’s hide hanging carelessly over his arm. Set in his belt and on his head and in the clasp around his knee were great blazing stars, and two dogs were at his heels.”

“Orion,” said Phyllisy, “I used to know him ages ago.”

The Princess nodded: “Yes. Taffy knew him at once.—The person to whom he was talking was a beautiful lady (not so very young), who sat in a massive, star-jeweled chair, and was alternately crying and scolding, while a man, evidently her husband, leaned over the chair and tried to quiet her. Near by stood a young man, looking very sulky; and from his hand swung a curious object. It was a woman’s head, with snakes instead of hair.”

“_Snakes?_” said Pat, her voice sliding up and down on it.

“_Snakes_,” said the Princess, firmly.

“For pitysakes!”

“They had once been quite stiff and wriggly snakes, and had stood up on end, each one of them, and squirmed, but now they were limp and raggy. And Taffy didn’t wonder when he saw how Perseus was absent-mindedly swinging it by one or another of the snakes, and letting it wind up and unwind again around his finger.

“Like Orion and his dogs, these people and others who crowded near were studded and decked with shining stars; and it was by their stars, that he knew so well, that Taffy recognized these Star People in their unaccustomed places.

“‘Yes, I _could_!’ the lady in the chair was saying. ‘And he isn’t the one to say, anyway!’

“‘What’s the matter?’ asked Taffy; and they all jumped, and then all began talking at once, so he couldn’t understand a word they said.

“‘Hus-sh!’ he said, holding up his hand. And they gradually stopped talking, all but Orion. (And Cassiopeia kept on saying things to her husband—but that didn’t count.)

“‘Who are you?’ asked Orion.

“‘I’m the Mate of the Jane Ellen,’ said Taffy. ‘And I want to know what’s the trouble. It doesn’t seem much to ask for—just one star.’

“‘No,’ answered Orion, ’it doesn’t. And we’re all willing. But who is going to hold that star?—and how are we going to know it’s always in the same spot?’

“‘I should think you might agree about that easily enough,’ said Taffy.

“‘Well, we can’t,’ said Orion. ‘I can’t do it; I have other things to attend to.’

“‘And you won’t let any one else!’ broke in Cassiopeia. ‘You know how I just sit in my chair, and I’d love to hold it.’

“‘She can’t,’ said Orion. ‘Pretty thing for a woman to do!’

“‘I’m not a woman,’ observed Perseus.

“‘Don’t you say another word!’ said Cassiopeia. (‘And stop twirling that Gorgon!—You make me nervous.) You know perfectly well, you have to keep away the monster from my darling child.’

“Perseus said no more, but he looked sulkier than ever.

“‘No, he can’t,’ said Orion. ‘And beside that, you’re used to seeing us move about. Now if one of us gives up his own place, it will mix you all up.’

“‘That’s true,’ said Taffy. And just as he spoke, something rubbed against his hand,—something that sent a little prickly shock through him at first, and at the same time, the very softest thing he ever had felt or imagined.

“He looked down and saw a little bear—but such a little bear! His long fur was, in color, a beautiful blue-gray, and the tip of each hair seemed to have been dipped in moonlight or powdered with star-dust, for it shone and glinted in the starlight as he moved; and his eyes twinkled like two little stars themselves; and curiously enough for a little bear, he had a great long tail. And unlike any of the Star People, he hadn’t a star on him anywhere.