Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A TALK ON THE WATER. ANT a boat, sir?

No, thank you, my boy; it is too cold for the water to-day.

Perhaps it is, sir, for land folk; but I go out any weather with father; so I takes less notice, I suppose.

How long have you taken to the water 1

O sir, said the boy; and he looked up with a pleasant smile on his weather-beaten young face, and tossed his dark hair back from his forehead? I don’t remember the time when I first got into father’s boat; it seems to me I might have been cradled in it, for all I know. The first thing I can think upon is having the great waves all round me, and the little white fish dancing about in them.

Oh, your father is a fisherman, is he ?

Yes, sir; he fishes, as well as keeps this here boat; ‘cause, don’t you see, sir, this weather, when nobody goes out hardly, we shouldn’t all of us be able to live onboating; for we’re a brave, big family?nine of us, besides father and mother; and there’s only two of us away at sea; they’re mostly little 'uns.

And how old are you ?

Fourteen, sir.

And a fine boy of your age, too, said the stranger, smiling. At that moment?as it sometimes happens in winter? the sun shining out suddenly from behind a cloud, lit up the inky sea with wonderfully beautiful effect, changing, as if by magic, and in a moment, the whole aspect of the scene. The bay was crowded with small and large sailing vessels, waiting for a favourable wind, and the sunbeams caught the white and brown sails, and the mast-heads, and lit all up with their own glorious, golden beauty.
It is enough to tempt one out, if this sunshine will only last, said the stranger.
We shall have gleams like this, rejoined the boy, looking up at the white masses of cloud and the dark sky betwe…