Captain Mugford | Page 5

as a dream, and sometimes as I thought of it, recalling the events of the journey there and back in the chaise, the wild scenery and the strange sound of the surf, the old dark house and the devoted black servants--sometimes, I say, as I thought of all these, as I loved to do when I settled myself in bed for the night, or when in summer I lay on my back in the grass looking up at the flying clouds, I would have to stop and fix my attention sharp, to be sure whether it ever had been a reality, or whether it might not be, after all, only a dream. I think my father was afraid of the fascination of the cape for us boys--afraid its charms, if we once partook of them freely, might distract our attention from the order and duties of school life. To be sure, we always went to the country with our parents for a month or six weeks, and enjoyed it exceedingly, laying up a stock of trout, squirrel, and badger stories to last us through the winter. But there was no other country, we imagined, like the cape; and as our father and mother never lived there, and rarely spent even a single night on the whole property, they thought it best, I suppose, that we should not run wild there and get a relish for what all boys seem to have, in some degree, by nature. I mean the spirit of adventure, and love of the sea.
However, the good time came at last, or a reliable promise of it first, just fifty years ago this very February. We older boys--Walter, sixteen years of age, Drake, fourteen, and I, Robert, twelve--were attending school at Bristol, and were, as usual too in the winter evenings, at work over our lessons at the library table, when, on one never-to-be-forgotten evening, our father, who was sitting in an easy chair by the fire, suddenly asked, "Boys, how would you like to pass next summer on the cape?" Ah! didn't we three give a terrific chorus of assent? "Jolly! magnificent! splendid!" we cried, while Walter just quietly vaulted over half a dozen chairs, two or three at a time, backwards and forwards, till he had expended some of the animal vivacity stored up in abundance within him. Drake, as usual when extremely pleased, tried to accomplish the rubbing of his stomach and the patting of his head both at the same time; and I climbed into the chair with my father, and patted his cheeks and thanked him with a fierce shake of the hands.
"Bob, boy, you are the only one of my youngsters who has been at the old place, and you must have painted it as a wonderful corner of the earth, that Walter and Drake should testify their pleasure in such eccentric ways.--And look here, Walter: when you wish to turn acrobat again, let it not be in this library or over those chairs; choose some piece of green grass out of doors.--Well, boys, perhaps you can pass the summer at the cape. I do not promise it, but shall try to arrange it so if your mother is willing; but under the unfailing condition that you make good progress in your studies until that time."
"Shall we all be there together, father, and for the whole summer, and without any school? How delightful!"
"Not too fast, Drake. Without school? What an idea! Why, in six months you would be as wild and ignorant as the sheep there. No; you shall have a strict tutor, who will keep you in harness, and help Walter to prepare for going up next year to Cambridge. But only you three will be there. I have some business in London, and I shall take your mother and Aggie and Charley with me."
During those February evenings there were many more conversations on the same subject, full of interest to us boys, and finally it was fully decided by our father and mother that we should go in May, and stay there until autumn; that a certain Mr Clare should be our tutor, and that Clump and Juno should be our housekeepers and victuallers.
Never did a springtime appear longer and more wearisome. We counted every day, and were disgusted with March for having thirty-one of them. What greatly increased our impatience and the splendour of our anticipation was that, some time in March, our father told us that a brig had been cast away in a curious manner on the shore of the cape, and that he had purchased the wreck as it lay, well preserved and firmly held in the rocks above ordinary high-tide. He proposed, at some future time, to make use of it as a sort of