"Why, it be one Trafford's, one o' the strangest—" A sudden expression in the boy's face checked the words on the skipper's tongue, and the truth began to dawn upon his slow brain. "Great fishes!" cried he, falling back a step or two, "ye ben't goin' there?"
"Yes," said Noll, as quietly as he could. "Why not?"
The skipper gave him a long, steady survey, and then stumped away across the deck without another word, leaned over the rail, and began to whistle. Noll looked after him, half determined to follow and demand what he meant, yet half dreading to learn that all his visions were a great way from the truth. Perhaps it would be better to wait, he thought; night would bring the journey to an end, and then he should know all. So he did not follow the skipper, but kept his seat, while a great many shadowy forebodings crept into his heart, and he began to look back over the trackless waste which they had come, and wish, almost, that he was back in dear old Hastings—in the old home where papa and he had spent so many happy hours—and that Culm Rock was a myth. The sun rose royally up to noon, and odors of dinner began to ascend from the hatchway. Noll had a dinner of his own somewhere in a basket, which he brought forth and ate on the bale which served him for a seat, enjoying the novelty in spite of the anxious speculations concerning his new home in which he could not help indulging.
After dinner the skipper was in better humor than ever, and took his turn at the helm. Noll, wandering about the deck, stopped to watch him, whereupon the master of the "Gull" good-naturedly answered all his questions, and even allowed him to take the tiller a few minutes, laughing the while at his white hands that could hardly grasp it.
"Wish ye could see my lads' hands!" he said; "could take both 'o' yourn in one uv 'em, an' not know they was holding anything. But you'll have browner paws afore ye leave Culm!"
"Of course!" said Noll, "for I'm going to get Uncle Richard to teach me to row,—I can swim now,—and I'm going to be around the shore half the time."
"Likely enough, likely enough!" said the skipper, meditatively; and when Noll had passed on, he muttered, "It's a pesky shame fur the lad to be sent off and cooped up on the Rock! Don't know what he's comin' to, nuther. I'll be blamed ef I ain't sorry for the boy!"
