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As the water left her, she fell over a little, of course; and at half-tide her keel lay high and dry. The prying eyes of all hands were now busy looking out for the leaks. As might have been expected, none were found near the garboard streak, a fact that was clearly enough proved by a quantity of the water remaining in the vessel after she lay, entirely bare, nearly on her bilge.
In some sea novel he remembered to have come across the expression "garboard streak," and from the context guessed it was to be applied to a detail of a vessel's construction. In an unguarded moment he had written that his schooner's name "was painted in showy gilt letters upon her garboard streak." "What's the garboard streak, Condy?" Blix had asked, when he had read the chapter to her.
"Well, that is queer!" they heard him mutter, as he thrust a finger through the hole in the garboard streak of the boat. "What strikes you as so funny, Max?" asked Steve, who had by now joined them. "Look for yourself," replied the other, moving back. Four heads were instantly bent over, as the boys took his advice.
Blocked up on a tidewater slipway, every detail of the vessel was visible, even to the last fathom of oakum now being hammered into her port garboard seam. White painted and trim, she spelled speed and weatherliness in every line, and a note of admiration escaped Barry as he regarded her clean underbody from a safe distance.
"Shiver my garboard strake," he exclaimed contritely, when Rob pointed out to him that he might have killed one of the occupants of the hydroplane, "shiver my garboard strake, lad, I saw red fer a minute just like I did that time the Chinese pirates boarded the Sarah Jane Butts in the Yellow River."
The mink would soon be joined by a 'possum; then would come a pair of muskrats; after which we'd expect to find a fox under our feet every time we stepped; a wolverine growling like fun at us when we made the least move; a squirrel climbing all over us; a heron perched on the garboard streak, whatever that might be; and mebbe a baby bear rolling on the deck.
"What ails you, anyway? You seem to me to dislike everything that's profitable." "This ship has been condemned by Lloyd's agent," said I. "But I tell you it's a deal. The ship's in splendid condition; there's next to nothing wrong with her but the garboard streak and the sternpost. I tell you Lloyd's is a ring like everybody else; only it's an English ring, and that's what deceives you.
"That's my name Benjamin B. Higgins, of the smack Calista, buying lobsters from Cranberry Island to Portland, and this is my son Brad, my first mate and crew. I own this boat from garboard to main truck, bowsprit-tip to boom-end, and I don't wear any man's dog-collar. I'll give you a square deal on weight and pay you as much as any smackman, neither more nor less. Do we trade?"
Then, after a time, it got rather monotonous, and I took a short sea trip for my health. But, by Jove, every blessed inch of the whole ship from the screw to the bowsprit had something to say, and the bad language used by the garboard strake when the ship rolled was something too awful! You don't happen to know what the garboard strake is, do you?" "No," I replied.
Soon, even that frail ark was shattered. When keel and garboard stroke plates snapped, all that was left of the Andromeda toppled over, and the cavern she had invaded rang with a fierce note of triumph as the next wave thundered in without hindrance. It was, indeed, a new and strange world on which Iris looked when able to breathe and see once more.
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