'Yes, I know, Foster. But, Foster, just look at the tip of Flat Rock showing up already. It's going to be a dead low tide, and----'
'Don't you dare now! Ah, I know what you're going to say. No, I won't have it. Leastways I won't argy over it. And don't you disobey orders--not if all the crayfish in Australy was a runnin' up out o' the water, and climbin' trees.' Then, screwing his features up into an affectation of great wrath, he shuffled away again.
Tom's face fell, and again a heavy sigh escaped him, as he looked at the shimmering sea, and saw that beyond the bar it was as smooth as a mountain lake. Then he quietly opened the Venetian shutters of the dining-room, and let the bright sunlight stream in.
'It's no use,' he said to himself, 'I can't work this morning. I'll try and think a bit whether I shall go or not.'
Over the mantel in the dining-room was a marine picture. It was but rudely painted in water-colours--perhaps by some seaman's rough hand,--and the lapse of five and twenty years had dimmed it sadly; but to Tom's mind it was the finest painting in the world, and redolent of wild adventure and romance. It showed as a background the shore of a tropical island, the hills clothed with jungle, and the yellow beach lined with palm trees, while in the foreground the blue rollers of the ocean churned into froth against a long curve of coral reef, on which lay a man-of-war, with the surf leaping high over her decks, and with main and mizzen-masts gone. On the left of the picture was a beautiful white-painted brig, with old-fashioned rolling topsails and with her mainyard aback; and between her and the wreck were a number of boats crowded with men in uniform, escaping from the ship.
Often when the house was silent had Tom, even when a boy of ten, stolen into the room, and, sitting cross-legged on the rug, gazed longingly at the painting which, to his boyish imagination, seemed to live, ay, and speak to him in a wild symphony of crashing surf and swaying palm trees, mingling with the cries of the sailors and the shrill piping of the boatswain's whistles. Then, too, his eyes would linger over the inscription that, in two lines, ran along the whole length of the foot of the picture, and he would read it over and over again to himself gloatingly, and let his mind revel in visions of what he would yet see when he grew old enough to sail on foreign seas, as his father and his uncle Fred Hemsley had done. This is what the inscription said:--
'The Wreck of the Dutch warship Samarang on the coast of Timor Laut; and the Rescue of her Crew by the English brig Huntress, of Sydney, commanded by Mr. William Ford, and owned by Frederick Hemsley, Esquire, of Amboyna; on the morning of May 4, 1836.'
* * * * *
Half an hour later old Foster clattered suddenly along the verandah, peered into the schoolroom, and then into the dining-room, where Tom sat in a chair--still gazing at the picture.
'Rouse ye, rouse ye, Master Tom. Your eyes are better than mine. Here, look'--and he placed Mr. Wallis's telescope in the boy's hand--'look over there beyond Kooringa Rock. 'Tis a drifting boat, I believe. Kate tells me that it was in sight an hour ago, before your father and Master Jack went away, and yet the foolish creature never told me.'