“Well, no, my boy; no. But I don’t think it would be prudent. But there, there, we mustn’t think of it. We can’t do everything we like.”
Chapter Forty.
The Doctor’s Charge.
It was very tempting, and, like most lovers of natural history, the deeper he plunged into his pursuit, with its wonders upon wonders, the more infatuated Uncle Paul grew. The nephew was quite as bad, though, boy-like, his was more the natural love of novelty than that of science.
Who among you is there who has not revelled in the thought of something new, the eager desire to see something fresh? The country boy to see vast London with all its greatness and littleness, its splendour and its squalor, its many cares and too often false joys—the town boy to plunge into that home of mystery and wonder, the country. And though as a rule the country boy is disappointed, he of the town, when once he has tasted the true joys of the country and seen Nature at her best, is never satiated. But that love of the novel and the fresh is in us all—the desire for that which in Saint Paul’s days the men of Athens longed for: something new.
Hence then it was no wonder that Rodd, as he paced the schooner’s deck and looked across to either side of the river where the primeval forest commenced, felt the strange longing to go and see, to hunt and find the myriads of fresh things upon which he had never set eyes before—wonders that might be more than wonderful—dangers which would be exciting, possibly without danger; in short, all the boy’s natural love of adventure was stirring within him—that intense longing to cast away culture in every shape and to become, if for ever so short a time, something of the natural savage once more; and he was ready to urge on his uncle to go for just one expedition, only there was a sense of duty to hold him back.
And as the time went on, and the brig was rapidly approaching completion, Uncle Paul more than once angrily exclaimed to his nephew—
“Pickle, I wish that abominable Spaniard was on the other side of the world!”