“Now,” said Kearney, “I’m goin’ to teach you how to scull if you ever get adrift again.”
He drew in the sculls and then put one over the stern, resting it in the notch in the transom, and began to instruct his pupil how to scull a boat with a single oar.
Dick watched attentively, and then the sailor, with one hand on the oar, let his pupil grasp it to show him how it was done. The whole business was hopeless, for the child had neither the height nor strength for the work, though he had the spirit. But Kearney was not the man to cast cold water on a pupil. “That’s grand,” said he; “couldn’t be doin’ it better meself—that’s the way we do it—”
“Lemme—lemme!” cried Dick, trying to push the other aside and get the whole business in his own hands, and nearly losing the scull when he did.
“Ay,” said Kearney, recovering it, “I’ll let you when you’re a bit bigger—there now, let hold of it and maybe I’ll make you a little one to-morrow you can get a proper grip of. Now get forward and play with the boat huk—that’s more your size.”
Next morning, Kearney, pursuing his educational course, made Dick light the fire. Tried to, at all events. Stanistreet had left two tinder-boxes with them and a supply of flints, also matches, but the matches had almost given out, and as Kearney was an expert in the old method, he generally, now, used the flint and steel. Dick, gravely striking away with the flint, made a poor hand of the business, though he seemed to enjoy it, and it took two to do the business at last. All the same it was a beginning—and something new to do. There was lots to be done in the ordinary way of life, between fishing and cooking and what not, but it had grown monotonous from repetition. Teaching Dick gave everything a new tinge and supplied an impetus that was beginning to fail.
Then, after breakfast, Kearney bethought him of the little paddle he had promised to make. He had no wood to make it of and the problem of what to do gave him a comfortable half hour’s meditation over his pipe till he solved it by rooting out the saw and sawing off one of the rail-like branches of a dwarf arm that grew near the water.
Here was a piece of straight wood eight inches thick and over four feet long. It only wanted thinning and shaping, and with a knife in his hand down he sat, Dick disposed before him in various postures as the work went on, sometimes standing, sometimes kneeling or sitting—always absorbed, sometimes helping.
The feature that was beginning to strike out individually in the child was his mouth. Dick was a nose-breather and only opened his mouth to eat, and sometimes to talk in two- or three-word sentences. You could chase him round the sward and his way of breathing would be just the same, and, like the Red Indians, when he laughed he rarely opened his lips. It was a beautiful mouth, firm, well curved and showing the dawn of decision upon it.
“Hold it tight now,” said Mr. Kearney, and he gave one end of the piece of branch to Dick.