At home we had
great enjoyment of his long descriptive letters, which came under
cover to our father at the Admiralty, but were chiefly intended for
my benefit. All were proud of them, and great was my elation when I
heard papa relate some fact out of them with the preface, 'My boy
tells me, my boy Clarence, in the Calypso; he writes a capital
letter.'
How great was our ecstasy when after three years and a half we had
him at home again; handsome, vigorous, well-grown, excellently
reported of, fully justifying my mother's assurances that the sea
would make a man of him. There was Griffith in the fifth form and a
splendid cricketer, but Clarence could stand up to him now, and
Harrovian exploits were tame beside stories of sharks and negroes,
monkeys and alligators. There was one in particular, about a whole
boat's crew sitting down on what they thought was a fallen tree, but
which suddenly swept them all over on their faces, and turned out to
be a boa-constrictor, and would have embraced one of them if he had
not had the sail of the boat coiled round the mast, and palmed off
upon him, when he gorged it contentedly, and being found dead on the
next landing, his skin was used to cover the captain's sea-chest.
Clarence declined to repeat this tale and many others before the
elders, and was displeased with Emily for referring to it in public.
Pages:
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33