“I want to see all I can see on this cruise,” said Allan, reddening a little as he spoke, “and I want if possible to make the voyage pay. Well, bother take you, Ralph, call it ‘makin’ money’ if you like.”
“The gigantic mammoth,” continued McBain, “used inhabit the far northern regions, where they existed in millions. Now human nature is the same all over the world, and, I suppose, always has been. Man is a collecting animal; the North American Indians collect scalps—”
“Misers collect money,” said Rory, “and little boys stamps.”
“In some parts of the world,” McBain went on, “the natives make giant pyramids of the antlers of deer; the King of Dahomey prefers human skulls, and if there be caves filled with mammoth tusks, as the traditions of the Norwegians would lead us to believe, they were doubtless collected by the natives as trophies of the hunt, and stowed away in caves. The mammoth you know was the largest kind of elephant—”
“Och!” cried Rory, interrupting McBain; “what an iconoclast you are to be sure; what a breaker of images?”
“Explain, my boy,” said McBain, smiling, for he could spy fun in Rory’s eye.
“You say the mam-moth was an elephant,” said Rory. “Och! sure it was myself was thinking all the time it was a kind of a butterfly.”
“Indeed, indeed, Rory,” said Ralph, “I think it is time little boys like you were in bed.”
“Well, boys,” said McBain, rising, “maybe it is time we all turned in, and thankful we have to be for a quiet night, for a fair wind, and a clear sea. Dream about your ‘butterfly,’ Rory, my son, for depend upon it we’ll see him yet.”
Next day was Sunday. How inexpressibly calm and delightful, when weather is fine and wind is fair, is a Sunday at sea. It is then indeed a Sabbath, a day of quiet rest.