They sailed tack and half tack, and while mainsail and jib bellied out in the breeze, the captain used to take out his guitar and sing songs sweet and low, that he well knew would ravish and enchant those three little maidens, and delight even the heart of the Dane.
Thus sailing and singing they would approach the harbour mouth, and down would drop the mainsail.
Those ocean picnics were not only delightful, they were idyllic—summer idylls—and Antonio had meant they should be so. Weird and strange though he looked, it was quite evident that his chief happiness consisted in making others happy.
. . . . . .
Though I have called the Grebe a sloop, she was to all intents and purposes a sweet little lass of a yacht, as tight a wee craft as ever went dancing over a British sea. Antonio was nothing if not a sailor; and as at one time of his life, and before he had his eye knocked out, he had served in the Royal Navy, he knew what discipline and duty was, and also what a ship, however small, should be. He managed to make his little craft, the Grebe, a perfect picture. There was not much brass work about her to be sure, but what there was positively shone like gold; wood work was polished, the decks kept almost as white as the keys of a piano, and the mast, topmast, and jib-boom scraped till they looked like bleached straw.
The sails, too, were white and bonnie, and every rope was coiled on deck and kept in its place.
Well, there was a cabin or cuddy amidship, and here the children and Antonio dined if a shower came on, otherwise on deck, in true sailor fashion.
They all liked this plan best, because they could throw over crumbs and suet to the lovely sea-mews and gulls, that had followed them from home.
Even a rook or two were among these, for strange as it may appear, rooks on the sea-coast often learn to be sea-birds. They are very awkward at first, and often nearly choke themselves in picking crumbs off the water, and they have a difficulty in rising again.
Perhaps, reader, there is a kind of cousinly friendship existing between seaside rooks and gulls; for while the former visit the sea, the two can often be seen walking side by side on a dewy morning, feeding on the grubs and slugs to be found in a field of growing turnips.