The Skipper laughed quietly. "The mermaids see not any difference, sir," he said. "Where I take one shell from its rock, I leave a hundred, a thousand. The sea is a good mother, she has plenty children. See!" he added, lifting a splendid horned shell, "this is the Royal Triton. On a rock I found him, twenty fathom down. It was a family party, I think, for all around they lay, some clinging to the rock, some in the mud, some walking about. I take one, two, three, put them in my pouch; up I go, and the others, they have a little more room, that's all."
John's eyes glowed in his head.
"I—I should like to see that!" he cried. "What is it like down there? Do sharks come by,—swish! with their great tails? And why don't they eat you, like the man in the geography book? And is there really a sea-serpent? And do the oysters open and shut their mouths, so that you can see the pearls, or how do you know which are the right ones?
"There are a great many things that I have thought about all my life," he said, "and nobody could ever tell me. The bottom of the sea, that is what I want most in the world to know about."
He paused, out of breath, and would have been abashed at his own boldness, had not the Skipper's eyes told him so perfectly that they had understood all about it, and that there was no sort of reason why he should not ask all the questions he liked.
They were wonderful eyes, those of the Skipper. Most black eyes are wanting in the depths that one sounds in blue, or gray, in brown, more rarely in hazel eyes; they flash with an outward brilliancy, they soften into velvet, but one seldom sees through them into the heart. But these eyes, though black beyond a doubt, had the darkness of deep, still water, when you look into it and see the surface mantling with a bluish gloss, and beneath that depth upon depth of black—clear, serene, unfathomable. And when a smile came into them,—ah, well! we all know how that same dark water looks when the sun strikes on it. The sun struck now, and little John felt warm and comfortable all through his body and heart.
"The bottom of the sea?" said the Skipper, taking up a shell and polishing it on his coat-sleeve. "Yes, that is a fine place, Colorado. You mind not that I call you Colorado? It pleases me,—the name. A fine place, truly. You have never seen the sea, young gentleman?"
The boy shook his head.
"Never, really!" he said. "I—I've dreamed about it a great deal, and I think about it most of the time. There's a picture in my geography book, just a piece of sea, and then broken off, so that you don't see any end to it; that makes it seem real, somehow, I don't know why.
"But I've heard the sound of it!" he added, his face brightening. "There's a shell in Mr. Scraper's parlour, on the mantelpiece, and sometimes when he goes to sleep I can get it for a minute, and hold it to my ear, and then I hear the sound, the sound of the sea."