Old John, the engineer, was one of these--a big, roly-poly sort of fellow, five foot eleven, if he was an inch, with layers of flesh showing through his thin shirt and tight trousers, and his face and neck constantly standing in beads of sweat. Then there was the smith, a small, wiry man of thirty-five, with arms like a Titan and a face that was expressive of a goodly humor, whether it was very brilliant or not--the village smith, as we used to call him. Then there was Ike, little Ike, the blacksmith’s helper, who was about as queer a little cabin boy as ever did service on an ocean-going steamer or in a blacksmith’s shop--a small misshapen, dirty-faced lad, whose coat was three, and his trousers four, times too large for him--hand-me-downs from some mysterious source; immensely larger members of his family, I presume. He had a battered face, such as you sometimes see given to satyrs humorously represented in bronze, and his ears were excessively large. He had a big mouthful of dirty yellow teeth, two or three missing in front. His eyes were small and his hands large, but a sweeter soul never crept into a smaller or more misshapen body. Poor little Ike. To think how near he came to being driven from his job by our tomfoolishness! I should say here that the _Idlewild_ was not a boat at all, but an idea. She evolved out of our position on Long’s Point, where the Harlem joins the Hudson, and where stood the shop in which we all worked, water to the south of us, water to the west of us, water to the north of us, and the railroad behind us landward, just like the four--or was it the six? hundred--at Balaklava. Anyhow, we got our idea from the shop and the water all around, and we said, after much chaffering about one thing and another, that we were aboard the _Idlewild_, and that the men were the crew, and that the engineer was the captain, and I was the mate, just as if everything were ship-shape, and this were a really and truly ocean-going vessel. As I have said before, I do not know exactly how the idea started, except that it did. Old John was always admiring the beautiful yachts that passed up and down the roadstead of the Hudson outside, and this may have had something to do with it. Anyhow, he would stand in the doorway of his engine room and watch everything in the shape of a craft that went up and down the stream. He didn’t know much about boats, but he loved to comment on their charms, just the same. “That there now must be Morgan’s yacht,” he used to say of a fine black-bodied craft that had a piano-body finish to it, an’ “That there’s the _Waterfowl_, Governor Morton’s yacht. Wouldn’ ja think, now, them fellers ’d feel comfortable a-settin’ back there on the poop deck an’ smokin’ them dollar cigars on a day like this? Aw, haw!” It would usually be blistering hot and the water a flashing blue when he became excited over the yacht question. “Right-o,” I once commented enviously.