"There's everything to see," said Bobby and she looked at Percival.
Ten days ago nothing could have induced him to do such an unconventional and conspicuous thing. He remembered the exact phrase he had applied to it when told by the Scotchman of Bobby's previous adventure. "Characteristically American," he had remarked, with a disparaging shrug.
Now, with assumed languor, he said, "I don't mind going with you."
Two sailors were found to tie the ropes around their waists and stand guard below while they slowly and cautiously climbed from one swaying rung to another.
"All right?" asked Bobby, looking down over her shoulder.
"Right as rain," called Percival, with suggestion of eagerness in his voice.
He followed her cautiously as she scrambled like a squirrel from the top of the ladder to the crow's-nest. Swinging through the clear sky one hundred feet above the water below, they found themselves in the sudden intimacy of a vast and magnificent solitude. The sapphire sky met the sapphire sea in a sharply defined, unbroken line around them, while shimmers of palpitating light rose from the sparkling waters until they lost themselves in the zenith above.
"Oh, look! look!" cried Bobby, with an eager hand on Percival's arm. Turning, he saw the water suddenly disturbed by hundreds of curved bodies that glistened in the sunlight as they leaped together in a perfect riot of joy.
"Silly old fish, the porpoise," he said, "always making circles in the water like that"
But the ennui expressed in his words was not reflected in his face. Even silly old porpoises acquire an interest when one's attention is called to them by a small and shapely hand that forgets in the enthusiasm of the moment to remove itself from one's arm. It was only by sharply calling to mind the haughty faces of his mother and sisters that he refrained from indiscretion.