The
terrific storms that lash the coast; the kelp and spars, and
sometimes the bodies of drowned men, tossed on shore by the
scornful waves; the shipyards, the wharves, and the tawny fleet of
fishing-smacks yearly fitted out at Rivermouth--these things, and a
hundred other, feed the imagination and fill the brain of every
healthy boy with dreams of adventure. He learns to swim almost as
soon as he can walk; he draws in with his mother's milk the art of
handling an oar: he is born a sailor, whatever he may turn out to
be afterwards.
To own the whole or a portion of a rowboat is his earliest
ambition. No wonder that I, born to this life, and coming back to
it with freshest sympathies, should have caught the prevailing
infection. No wonder I longed to buy a part of the trim little
sailboat Dolphin, which chanced just then to be in the market. This
was in the latter part of May.
Three shares, at five or six dollars each, I forget which, had
already been taken by Phil Adams, Fred Langdon, and Binny Wallace.
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