Just imagine if you can how delicious it was to go sailing away over the summer seas in a fairy-like yacht such as the Oceana—the blue above and the blue below, white-winged gulls tacking and half-tacking in the air around. Perhaps a shoal of porpoises in the offing, and great jelly-fishes floating everywhere in the water like animated parasols.
They were entirely independent of the land when once fairly afloat; for the Oceana was well provisioned, and had over and above all her other stores a tiny library of the most readable books of adventure and poetry.
No, it was little wonder that Tom became a sailor under so pleasant a captain as Uncle Robert, and on board so fairy-like a yacht.
But neither on shore was Tom’s nautical studies neglected; for in a room of uncle’s cottage was situated a huge toy ship, which he had built and rigged himself, and which he and his pupils often dismantled and rigged up again. Full rigged she was, with every spar, bolt, and stay in its proper place—a very model of perfection.
But the most curious thing I have to relate is that ’Theena learned every branch of the seafarer’s craft quite as readily as, and even more quickly than, Tom himself. Born and brought up at sea, she appeared to take to everything intuitively.
Taking it all in all, both Uncle Robert and his pupils enjoyed themselves very much, indeed, both on shore and afloat; but whether most on shore or most afloat, it would have been difficult to say.
“My dear children,” said uncle one day at the hermitage, just as they had finished luncheon and were preparing for a long ramble—“my dear children, I shall miss you very much when you go away. I expect I’ll begin to get old very quickly after that.”
“Dear unky,” said Tom, “you are never going to grow old. Don’t you believe it.”
“And we are never going to grow any older either, unky,” said ’Theena.
Uncle Robert laughed.