“O Captain! can we sail to-day?” we all cried, for the joke and his unusually radiant face signified something better to come.
“I have a fancy that way, if Mr Clare says yes. That’s my business here this fine Saturday. Yes, Mr Clare? Thank you! the youngsters are mad for a trip under canvas. You will go with us, sir, I hope? Thank you again!—Scamper, boys, for your caps! Ha! ha! ha!—With your permission, Mr Clare, I will fill my pipe.—Juno! Juno! Ah! there you are. Do, like a good old woman, get me a coal out of your wood-fire—just such a red, round piece of oak as Clump always chooses.”
Presently Juno trudged smiling back, with a hot coal held in the tongs.
“Here, massa! here, Capting, is de berry heart of de fire!” and laying it carefully in the bowl of his pipe—“dat, sar, will keep yer terbacker gwine all day.”
“Thank you, marm Juno! We shall try and bring you home some fish for dinner. A ninety-pound halibut, eh?”
The Captain having performed that operation so very necessary to his comfort, we all sallied forth for the long-anticipated sail.
The cape was about three-quarters of a mile wide where our house stood—it being on high ground, about halfway between the ocean and bay-side. The ground fell gradually in wavelike hillocks in both directions, and its chief growth was a short fine grass on which the sheep throve well. Here and there we saw them in little companies of eight or ten, but before we could get within fifty yards they scampered off in a fright, so unaccustomed were they to strangers.
Soon we descried a boat with pennant flying at moorings just off the bay shore before us. That, the Captain told us, was our “school-ship.”
“And now come, boys,” said he, “let us see which one of you will be the best hand on watch when we sail a frigate together—let us see which one can first read the boat’s name; it is on the pennant.”
At that distance we were all baffled.