“So did I when I was your age. I thought it would be the best fun in the world to be a Red Revenger of the Seas.”
“Wouldn’t it, though!” exclaimed Harry. “I don’t mean it would be fun to kill people, and to steal watches, but to have a schooner of your own, and go cruising everywhere, and have storms and—and—hurricanes, you know.”
“Why shouldn’t you do it this summer?” asked Uncle John. “If you want to cruise in a craft of your own, you shall do it; that is, if your father doesn’t object. A schooner would be a little too big for a boy of thirteen; but you and two or three other fellows might make a splendid cruise in a row-boat. You could have a mast and sail, and you could take provisions and things, and cruise from Harlem all the way up into the lakes in the Northern woods. It would be all the same as piracy, except that you would not be committing crimes, and making innocent people wretched.”
“Uncle John, it would be just gorgeous! We’d have a gun and a lot of fishing-lines, and we could live on fish and bears. There’s bears in the woods, you know.”
“You won’t find many bears, I’m afraid; but you would have to take a gun, and you might possibly find a wild-cat or two. Who is there that would go with you?”
“Oh, there’s Tom Schuyler, and Joe and Jim Sharpe; and there’s Sam M‘Grath—though he’d be quarrelling all the time. Maybe Charley Smith’s father would let him go. He is a first-rate fellow. You’d ought to see him play base-ball once!”
“Three boys besides yourself would be enough. If you have too many, there will be too much risk of quarrelling. There is one thing you must be sure of—no boy must go who can’t swim.”
“Oh, all the fellows can swim, except Bill Town. He was pretty near drowned last summer. He’d been bragging about what a stunning swimmer he was, and the boys believed him; so one day one of the fellows shoved him off the float, where we go in swimming at our school, and he thought he was dead for sure. The water was only up to his neck, but he couldn’t swim a stroke.”
“Well, if you can get three good fellows to go with you—boys that you know are not blackguards, but are the kind of boys that your father would be willing to have you associate with—I’ll give you a boat and a tent, and you shall have a better cruise than any pirate ever had; for no real pirate ever found any fun in being a thief and a murderer. You go and see Tom and the Sharpe boys, and tell them about it. I’ll see about the boat as soon as you have shipped your crew.”
“You are quite sure that your plan is a good one?” asked Mr. Wilson, as the boy vanished, with sparkling eyes, to search for his comrades. “Isn’t it very risky to let the boys go off by themselves in a boat? Won’t they get drowned?”