It was a fitting prelude to the captain's tales afterwards, and Mr.
Chalk, with the stem of his long pipe withdrawn from his open mouth,
would sit enthralled as his host narrated picturesque incidents of
hairbreadth escapes, or, drawing his chair to the table, made rough maps
for his listener's clearer understanding. Sometimes the captain took him
to palm-studded islands in the Southern Seas; sometimes to the ancient
worlds of China and Japan. He became an expert in nautical terms. He
walked in knots, and even ordered a new carpet in fathoms--after the
shop-keeper had demonstrated, by means of his little boy's arithmetic
book, the difference between that measurement and a furlong.
[Illustration: "Sometimes the captain took him to palm-studded islands in
the Southern Seas."]
"I'll have a voyage before I'm much older," he remarked one afternoon, as
he sat in the captain's sitting-room. "Since I retired from business
time hangs very heavy sometimes. I've got a fancy for a small yacht, but
I suppose I couldn't go a long voyage in a small one?"
"Smaller the better," said Edward Tredgold, who was sitting by the window
watching Miss Drewitt sewing.
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