“What will we carve? Anything you want, lad, from an ivory spoon or a jagging-wheel, for your mother to mark pies with, to a model of the Clearchus, exact in every line and rope, and all made of ivory and silk. I brought me some silk thread for just that. Or we might make a swift, to wind off the hanks of wool. One of the boatsteerers, last voyage, made one. It was a strange thing, full of joints, and could be pulled out large or pushed in small to fit, like a lazy tongs. It seemed to work fine, but there was no real beauty in it, just flat links and all; a very good machine, but no piece of work for an artist to turn out. Still, it don’t need to be so plain. We could carve {50} the links and the shaft and the pedestal with a mermaid or two and some dolphins and old Nepchune and his car, and tip off the links with a mermaid’s head at the top and her tail at the bottom. Oh, yes, Timmie, it comes to me now that a real artist might do something even with the reel. We ’ll make one if you like. Or we might make you a cane to use when you get back from this voyage a fine, big man, and go walking about the streets to turn the heads of the girls. Oh, there ’s many a thing we can make, and—hello! Ahoy, there!” As Peter spoke I turned quickly toward the try-pots, for it was there he was looking. The oil in one of the pots was being dipped out into the copper cooling-tank, and the other pot was almost ready. Something had happened to one of the men as he swung his dipper. The dipper is practically a pail of copper held in an iron ring at the end of an iron shaft about three feet long; and on the end of this shaft is a long sapling handle. I did not know, at the time, what had happened, but I found, afterwards, that the man had hit his elbow and the contents of his dipper had been emptied into the second pot. What I saw was a thin wreath of smoke rising from the pot, with a tremendous bubbling and commotion in it, and instantly the oil burst into flame, which licked the near-by woodwork and rigging, and sent out a great volume of black smoke.