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About ten minutes later, both of us were in jeans and sneakers.

"Where are you going?" Uncle Jacob called from the living room.

"To see about that beached whale," Cary said. "Be right back."

"Make sure you are," Uncle Jacob warned.

We hurried out of the house and over the beach. The absence of a crowd of people indicated something had occurred. When we drew nearer, we saw the whale was gone.

"Coast guard must have come and dragged her out to sea," Cary said.

"Think it's all right?" I gazed over the dark water.

"Either she swam off or sank where they unhitched her," he commented with characteristic Cape Cod bluntness.

"At least she won't be victimized by cruel people."

"Yeah," he said. Even in the darkness, I could feel his eyes on me. "You sure look a lot like your mother in those pictures."

"Thank you," I muttered, looking down at the sand. Then I took a deep breath of the fresh salt air. "I guess I'll catch up on my reading for social studies," I said.

"Catch up? I bet you mean go ahead."

"Something like that," I confessed, and he laughed. "I'll try to see all your teachers and get them to give me your work so you don't fall behind."

"Whatever," he said.

We started back to the house. I walked with my arms folded over my breasts, my head down. Above us, the night sky burst with stars, but I felt afraid to look up, afraid I would be hypnotized and spend all night standing on the beach.

"Say," Cary said, "would you. . would you like to see my model ships?"

"Up in the attic?"

He nodded.

"Sure."

When we entered the house, we heard a voice on the radio droning about sin and damnation. Both of us peeked into the living room and saw Uncle Jacob slouched down in his chair, asleep, and snoring almost as loudly as the radio. Cary put his finger on his lips and smiled. We walked up the stairway quietly and he pulled down the ladder to the attic.

"Careful," he said as I started up after him. He reached down to help me make the last few steps.

It was smaller than I had thought. On my earlier quick look, I hadn't seen how the roof slanted on both sides of the room. He had a table on which he worked on his model ships. The completed ships were lined up on a half dozen shelves. It looked as if he had done a hundred or so different models. To the right was a cot and on the left were boxes and sea chests.

"Careful," he said when I stood up, "Watch your head." The roof slanted sharply, so I had to move forward to stand up straight. "This," he said, going to the shelves, "is my historical section. They go left to right chronologically. This is an Egyptian ship." He lifted it gingerly and held it in front of me. "About three thousand b.c. It has a double mast, joined at the top, from which the sails are hung."

He put it back and lifted another.

"This is Phoenician. They were better shipbuilders. It's called the round boat, one of the first to depend mostly on sails rather than oars, and as you can see, it has a larger cargo space."

I saw how serious he was when he talked about his ships. His face filled with enthusiasm and brightened. His voice was full of energy and he talked so fast and so much, I was overwhelmed, but I tried to keep up.

He went through the Greek and Roman models, showed me a Norse vessel that he said was used to invade England. He had even constructed a Chinese junk. He said that although it was still used, it lacked three components regarded as fundamental to ships: a keel and stem and stern posts. He lectured and illustrated everything on his models, but I saw that he was most proud of his sailing ships.

"This," he said in a low, breathy voice, "is a replica of the H.M.S. Victory, the flagship of the British admiral Horatio Nelson."

"It's beautiful, Cary."

"Isn't it?" He beamed. He put it back carefully and lifted another. "This was Laura's favorite," he said, "the American clipper. This is a replica of the Great Republic, built in 1853. These ships set records for transatlantic crossings."