“Always are very hungry. Why, when I was a lad of your age I didn’t lead such an easy-going life as you do. You’re spoiled, Nic, by an indulgent father.—Here, help me to some of that ham.—Had to keep my watch and turn up on deck at all hours; glad to eat weavilly biscuit.—Give me that brown bit.—Ah, I ought to have sent you to sea. Made a man of you. Heard the thunder, of course?”
“No, father. Was there a storm?”
“Storm—yes. Lightning as we used to have it in the East Indies, and the rain came down like a waterspout.”
“I didn’t hear anything of it, father.”
“No; you’d sleep through an earthquake, or a shipwreck, or— Why, I say, Nic, you’ll soon have a beard.”
“Oh, nonsense, father! Shall I cut you some bread?”
“But you will,” said the Captain, chuckling. “My word, how time goes! Only the other day you were an ugly little pup of a fellow, and I used to wipe your nose; and now you’re as big as I am—I mean as tall.”
“Yes; I’m not so stout, father,” said Nic, laughing.
“None of your impudence, sir,” said the heavy old sea-captain, frowning. “If you had been as much knocked about as I have, you might have been as stout.”
Nic Revel could not see the common-sense of the remark, but he said nothing, and went on with his breakfast, glancing from time to time through the window at the glittering sea beyond the flagstaff, planted on the cliff which ran down perpendicularly to the little river that washed its base while flowing on towards the sea a mile lower down.