yard.”

“I don’t like that boat,” said Helen. Her lips twisted as though she were going to cry. “It has such big round eyes that stare at you.”

Her mother laughed. “You must have been sleepy when you passed the boat. That was only the figure20 of a man cut out of wood. The eyes didn’t belong to anybody who is actually alive.”

20

“I don’t know about that, mother,” Ben said soberly. “I saw the eyes, too, and I was wide-awake, for I pinched myself to make sure. Those eyes made little holes right through me when they looked down at me. They were looking at me, really, and not at Helen.”

“They were looking at me!” Helen insisted. “And I don’t like that ship! I want to go home to Boston.”

Mr. Seymour looked at her in astonishment. “Come, come, my dear child, you mustn’t let a thing like that frighten you. It is strange and grotesque but that only makes it more interesting. I’ll tell you about figureheads. The sailors think of the ship’s figurehead as a sort of guardian spirit that watches over the boat and protects it during storms. Even if it were alive it wouldn’t hurt you because it was created only to protect. But it isn’t alive, Helen, it is made out of wood. I’ll go with all of you to-morrow and let you touch it and then you will never be afraid of it again.”

“Do they always put figureheads on big boats, father?” asked Ann. She would not have been willing to admit that she, too, had those eyes upon her and had thought they seemed very much alive.

“No, not always,” Mr. Seymour explained. “Sometimes the portion over the cutwater of a ship is finished off with scrollwork, gilded and painted.21 Modern steamers don’t have them now, very often, but the deep-sea men who are on a sailing vessel months at a time like to feel that they have a figurehead to watch and care for them while they are asleep. The owners decide what it will be, and give directions to the builders. That is, if they name a boat after a man they will carve a statue of him for the bow, or else they will choose a saint or an old-time god, like Neptune, who was once supposed to rule over the sea. Sometimes they will have a mermaid, because mermaids are gay and dancing and will make the ship travel more swiftly; no sea could drown a mermaid. When a sailing ship makes a safe passage through storm and peril and brings the sailors home happy and well, they are very likely to believe that the figurehead has had as much 

 Prev. P 13/102 next