“Wait a bit, Nat,” he said smiling.
“Yes, uncle, but shall we see wonderful lands such as I should like?”
“You’ll see no wonderful lands with giants’ castles, and dwarfs and fairies in, Nat,” he replied smiling; “but before long I have no doubt that I shall be able to show you beauties of nature glorious enough to satisfy the most greedy imagination.”
“Oh! of course I did not expect to see any of the nonsense we read of in books, uncle,” I said; “only we have been away from home now three months, and we have not got a single specimen as yet, and I want to begin.”
“Patience, my boy, patience,” he said. “I am coming all this distance so as to get to quite new ground. So far we have not landed on a tropic island, for I shall not count civilised Singapore; but very soon we shall take to our own boat and coast along here and there, landing where we please, and you shall have nature’s wonders and natural history to your heart’s content. Look there,” he said softly; “there is a beginning for you. Do you see that?”
He pointed down into the gloriously blue clear water, illumined by the sunshine, which made it flash wherever there was the slightest ripple.
“Yes, I can see some lovely little fish, uncle,” I said. “Why, they are all striped like perch. There’s one all blue and scarlet. Oh! I wish I could catch him.”
“No, no; farther down there, where those pink weeds are waving on that deep-brown mass of coral. What’s that?”
“Why, it’s a great eel, uncle. What a length! and how thin! How it is winding in and out amongst the weed! Is it an eel?”
“No, Nat; it is a snake—a sea-snake; and there is another, and another. They are very dangerous too.”