“Delightful!” chimed in Nellie, catching hold of Rover’s fore-paws and making him dance round the room with her in high glee, Rover barking to express his sympathy with her excitement. “How good he is—I mean Captain Dresser; not you, Master Doggy!”
“It is well we know what you do mean,” said her aunt smiling, as Nell and Bob, with Rover dashing madly after their heels rushed into the hall to open the door. “Ah, the young flibberty-gibbets!”
In company with the Captain and Dick, as it still continued fine, all presently sallied down to the sea, where the young holiday-makers were much surprised at the size of the waves, which seemed much bigger on nearer view than they had appeared from the drawing-room windows in the morning.
Now they were so close to the waves that the spray splashed over the little party; and, it being high-water, the incoming tide, aided by the stiff south-easterly wind, which was still blowing half a gale, rolled the billows in upon the shore, dashing them against the sea-wall and rampart at the back of the castle with a mighty din, and breaking them into sheets of foam that flew over the moats and fortifications, reaching to the Common beyond—the spent water, driven back by the rocky embankment, sullenly retiring, a seething sea of soapsuds, as if Davy Jones were having a grand “washing-day.”
Much as this sight pleased them, strange and wonderful to their unaccustomed eyes, they were not allowed long to enjoy it; for, the Captain declaring that another squall was coming, presently made them hurry back to the house, laden, however, with sea-wrack and spindrift.
It was the same on the following day and the day after, the gale lasting until the close of the third; when it completed its course and died away as suddenly as it began, winding up with a grand thunderstorm, in which the lightning flashed and the thunder pealed through the heavens in a manner whose like, the Captain affirmed, he had never seen on that coast before.
“No, never, ma’am,” cried he, emphasising the assertion with a thump of his malacca cane that almost made a hole in Mrs Gilmour’s best drawing-room carpet. “Not since I first joined the service at Portsmouth here, forty years ago, or more!”
Satisfied apparently with the ‘blow’ it thus had, the weather subsequently was all that could be desired; setting in bright and fine, while it was warm enough to be almost tropical.
Thenceforth, therefore, there was no more confinement to the house for the young people.
Bob started off early every morning across the common to the beach, where, under the superintendence of the Captain, he and Dick were taught how to swim, the boys, it may be mentioned, learning the art all the more quickly from the fact of the old sailor’s telling them that “until they were able to keep afloat,” to use his own words, “he’d think twice before he would take ’em afloat!”