They got out the remains of our stoven boat, and set it up near the carpenter’s bench. When I got there the sailmaker and Peter Bottom were looking over the broken bones of the boat, feeling them, testing a rib or a plank here and there. They seemed to know what they were about, although they said nothing. It was just the way my father or one of his men would have gone about such a job. The very movements of the sailmaker, as he went to the pile of new cedar planking, and turned it over, and of Peter, as he picked out a piece of oak that suited him, reminded me of my father’s men. I stuck around for some time, watching their skilful, leisurely movements. I knew good ship carpentry when I saw it, for I had been observing it all my short life, and I had absorbed a good deal of the methods. My father’s men worked rather faster, but not so very much. There is more actually accomplished by making your work count, and not wasting a stroke, than in merely keeping very busy. Peter was a better workman than the sailmaker, and there was no object whatever in working fast, for they had plenty of time. The boat was done, as good as new, in ten days, and then painted, and lashed, bottom up, on top of the after house. One result of Peter’s work upon this boat was that thereafter he was a sort of unofficial ship’s carpenter. {193} CHAPTER XX We had the usual variations in weather, some good, some bad, but none very bad, to the Carroll grounds. For two thirds of the way the wind was mostly pretty strong from the west or southwest, giving the Clearchus what she liked best; for the last third of the way it drew in from the southeast, although we were not at any time in the region of the steady southeast trades, merely touching upon the border of that region toward the very last of the run. We ran into no gales, and made a passage of about five weeks, arriving on the Carroll grounds the last week in March. We then shortened sail, and began to cruise. It was the captain’s intention to quarter the ground thoroughly once, making slowly to the southeast, which was the windward side, and then to beat up for the Cape.