Kenneth was fond of caves, and there were plenty of them about here. He kept his boat in one. That very day, together the two friends had launched it, and spent all the long hours of sunlight in sailing or rowing about among the lovely islands of this sparkling sea, that look on a calm day as if they were actually afloat not in the water, but in the sky itself.
“My life,” said Kenneth, resuming his narrative of the day before, “my life, I thought, was going to be all rose-tinted now.
“Alas! Archie, lad, I soon found it quite the reverse, and it does really seem to me that those writers of books who paint a sailor’s existence as one long picnic do grievous wrong to the young folks who read them.
“A sailor’s life is like the billowy ocean on which he resides, all ups and downs, Archie.”
“I can easily believe that,” said his friend.
“But Captain Pendrey was very good to me, and there was an old boatswain on board who became my friend from the very first. He taught me to reef, to splice, and to steer, ay, and a deal more; in fact, during the two years I sailed in the old Miranda, he made a man of me.
“You see, Archie, I was already so far a seaman that I was not afraid of the ocean; and I was good at an oar.
“I was downright seasick when I first went out of Plymouth Sound. We had a head wind, and being only a sailing craft, had to beat and beat for days. I didn’t care much then what became of me. But the rough old bo’sun came and shook me up—I was lying nearly dead on a sea-chest—‘Pull yourself together, youngster. Go on deck,’ he said, ‘and look at the waves. Ain’t they mountains, just! It won’t do to give in.’
“I did go on deck and look at the waves, just for a moment. A green sea came thundering over the bows, took me off my legs, and washed me away down into the lee-scuppers, where I would have been drowned if the bo’sun hadn’t caught me up.