Then he carried them out of their depths, and loosed them, and they paddled away back without a sign of fear. Fear, in fact, seemed absolutely lacking in them. The only thing on earth of which they stood in any fear, as far as he could make out, was the grim old man in the upper room at Carne, and even in his case it seemed to be as much distrust and dislike as actual fear.
But even fearlessness has its dangers, and, mindful of his trust, Eager exacted from each of them a solemn promise not to go into the sea except when he was with them, for he had no mind to solve the old man's riddle for him in the way he had so hopefully suggested.
Those mornings on the sands and in the water proved the foundation on which he slowly and surely built the boys' characters.
A very few days of so close an intimacy stamped their individualities on his mind. After the third day he never again mistook one for the other. Time and again they tried to mislead him, but he saw deeper than they knew and never failed to detect them.
They were, at this time, remarkably alike in every way, and though, later on, each developed marked characteristics of his own, there all along remained between them resemblance enough to put strangers to confusion, a matter in which they at all times found extreme enjoyment.
But even now, like as they were, in face and body and the wild naturalness of their primeval ways, their respective personalities began to disclose themselves, as Eager broke them, bit by bit, to the harness of civilisation. And if their harnessing was no easy matter, either for themselves or their teacher, they came to realise very quickly that, though it might mean less of freedom in some ways, it meant also an immensely wider reach and outlook. Whereas their life had hitherto revolved in narrow grooves--with which indeed no man had taken the trouble to meddle, now it ran in courses that were ordered, but which also were spacious and lofty and filled with novelty and enterprise.
And as their natural characteristics began to develop in these more reasonable ways, Eager watched and studied them with intensest interest.
But little savages they remained in certain respects for a considerable time, and it was only by slow degrees that he managed to lead them out of darkness into something approaching twilight.
Jim, for instance, had a rooted detestation of every living thing he came across on the shore, and promptly proceeded to squash it with his bare foot or to pound it into jelly with his prehistoric club. From tiny delicate crab to senseless jelly-fish or screaming gull, if Jim came across it it must die if he could manage it.
To counteract, if he might, this innate lust for slaughter Eager took to explaining to them some of the more simple wonders and beauties of seashore life. He brought down a small pocket microscope and showed them things they had never dreamed of.