"Strange to say, you've almost hit upon the very name; for, the fisher- folk hereabouts and down the coast call the things 'mermaids' purses.'

They once contained the egg of some young skate or shark, who, when he was old enough, hatched himself, leaving his sh.e.l.l behind; and this being elastic, like gutta-percha, closed up again, so that it cannot be told how he got out."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs Gilmour. "I've often wondered what those things were, and never knew before."

"It's never too late, ma'am, to learn," said the Captain. "I myself only took up natural history, gathering the little knowledge I possess, after I was put on half-pay. Indeed, it was all owing to poor Ted, your husband and my old shipmate, that I ever thought of reading at all. He said it would be something for me to fall back upon for occupation when the Admiralty shoved me on the shelf; and, by Jove, he was right!"

"Poor Ted!" sighed Mrs Gilmour somewhat sadly. "Poor old Ted!"

"Not 'poor,' ma'am," said the Captain reverently, taking off his hat and looking upwards as he had done before when calling the children's attention to Him who taught the insects. "He's 'rich' Ted, now; and better off in his snug moorings aloft than you and I here below!"

"Yes, I know that, but it is hard to be content," replied the other, appearing lost in thought for some moments; until presently, recovering herself, she looked at her watch, when, seeing what time it was, she said they must start back for home at once. "Come along, children, time's up!"

"O-o-o-oh!" exclaimed Bob and Nellie in great consternation. "Why, we've only just come!"

"O-o-o-oh!" mimicked their aunt, amused at their woebegone faces. "Do you know that we've been down here nearly four hours! If we stop much longer, you'll be 'oh-ing' for your dinner, when it will be too late to get any, and how would you like that?"

"Humph! I thought I was feeling a bit peckish," said the Captain, wheeling about and preparing to head the return procession home, accepting Mrs Gilmour's remarks as a command. "Come on, children, we've got our sailing directions; so let us up anchor at once, for you'll have plenty of the beach before you see the last of it. I tell you what, though, I'll do for you if you are good."

"What, Captain?" cried Bob and Nellie, hanging on to his coat-tails as he stumped over the shingle by the side of their aunt, the faces of all now set homeward. "What?"

"Ah, you must wait till to-morrow!" was all that they could get out of him, however, in spite of their wheedlings and coaxings as they crossed the Common, with d.i.c.k and Rover following behind; the latter being too hungry even to bark, and only able to give a faint wag of his tail now and then when especially addressed by name. "Wait till to-morrow!"

CHAPTER SEVEN.

A SOUTH-EASTERLY GALE.

"Oh, Nell!" cried Bob to his sister the same evening, some time after dinner, which, through their explorations on the beach, was somewhat later than usual--"I do wonder what that mysterious 'something' is the Captain keeps promising us for 'to-morrow.' Can he be thinking of taking us for a trip on the sea in his yacht, or what?"

"I wonder," was all Nellie could say in reply to her brother's remark, echoing, so to speak, his own words--"I do wonder--what he is going to do, Bob?"

Their anxious curiosity, however, availed them naught; the old sailor keeping provokingly silent and being as mute as the Sphinx on the subject, in spite of their wistful looks and watchfulness.

Throughout the evening the Captain only opened his lips to say to Mrs Gilmour, with whom he was playing one of those post-prandial games of cribbage which it had been his wont to indulge in before the advent of Bob and Nellie on the scene to interrupt their regular routine, "Fifteen four and two for his heels," or "I'll take three for a flush, ma'am," as the case might be. He only made use of such-like technical phraseology common to cribbage players, limiting his conversation to the game alone; without leaving a loophole for either of the impatient listeners in the comer, who were turning over picture-books and otherwise diverting themselves, equally silently, till bedtime, to get in a word edgeways.

It was positively exasperating to Bob; especially as, the moment the old sailor chanced to notice one or other of the children eyeing him more attentively than usual on his looking up from the cards before him, he would smile knowingly and nod his head in the most waggish fashion.

"I don't think he means anything in particular at all," said the restless Master Bob a little later on to Nellie again. "See how funny he looks! He's only 'taking a rise' out of us, as he calls it."

"No, Bob," said Nellie, catching another quizzical look from the Captain just at that moment, "I don't think that. I'm sure he means something from that way he winked at us. Besides, Bob, he promised, and you know that Captain Dresser never breaks his word!"

Presently the report of the nine o'clock gun rolled through the night air, its echoes reverberating fainter and fainter until lost in the distance to seaward.

"By Jove!" exclaimed the Captain, throwing his cards on the table and rising from his seat,--"It's time for me to say good-night, or I shan't get any beauty sleep!"

"It's not so very late," said Mrs Gilmour, rising and going towards the open window looking over the Common. "What a lovely night it is!"

"Aye," replied the old sailor, following her, "the sky is bright and clear enough, certainly."

"Yes, what myriads of stars are out! I can see the 'milky way' quite plain, can't you, children?"

"Where, auntie?" asked Nellie behind her, while Bob stepped out on to the balcony the better to see. "I don't see it."

Mrs Gilmour showed them the forked pathway leading up from the south and east to the zenith, looking as if powdered with the dust of stars which 'Charles's wain,' as country people term the constellation, had crushed in its lumbering progress through the heavens.

Away beyond this golden 'wake' of starlets the more majestic planets shone in stately grandeur; while the evening star twinkled in the immensity of s.p.a.ce, still further away to the westwards.

"But the more you look at them, the further away they appear to go," put in Nellie. "Though, strangely enough, they don't seem to get any smaller."

"Aye, aye," acquiesced the Captain. "It _is_ awful to think of the millions of miles they are separated from our globe, and that yet their light reaches us! Why, it is wonderful for us to reflect on this!"

"Hark! I hear a church bell ringing," cried Bob suddenly at this point.

"It sounds as if it came from the sea out yonder."

"So it does, my boy," answered the Captain; "but not from any church.

It is the bell on the Spit buoy that you hear ringing away to the southward. It is a bad sign for to-morrow, denoting as it does a change of wind to a rainy quarter?"

"Oh dear!" exclaimed Bob, in such lugubrious tones that even Nellie laughed, although sharing his feelings about the prospect of a wet day, with the more than probable contingency of their being confined to the house. "What shall we do?"

"Cheer up, my lad, it may not be so bad after all," cried the Captain heartily. "But, really, I must be going now; for, it is close on ten o'clock and I shall lose all my beauty sleep, as I said before. Where is young d.i.c.k?"

"Down in the kitchen with Sarah," replied Mrs Gilmour to this question, ringing the bell as she spoke. "He'll soon be ready if you insist on taking him away with you."

"Humph!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the other, "as he's going to be my valet or factotum by the agreement we made to-day, I don't think we'll be able to tell whether we suit each other, ha-ha! if he remains in one house and I in another, eh?"

"Perhaps not," said Mrs Gilmour, smiling in response with the chuckle he indulged in at the recollection of his old joke on his way home from the dockyard; and d.i.c.k entering the room at the same moment, with a broad grin on his face as if he knew what they were talking about, she added--"Sure, here he is to spake for himself! Are you ready to go home with the Captain, d.i.c.k?"

"Yes, mum," answered the lad promptly. "Sarah told me as how the good gentleman allers went away sharp at nine o'clock, and so I comes up as the bell rung."

"That's right, sharp's the word and quick's the motion; so we'd better be off," said the old sailor, taking his hat and stick which the housemaid, Sarah aforesaid, brought in from the hall. "Good-night, ma'am,--good-night, chickabiddies!"

"Good-night!" replied Mrs Gilmour, Nellie echoing her aunt's adieu with a parting injunction of her own. "Pray be sure and bring back d.i.c.k to- morrow morning, Captain!"

"Perhaps, too, you'll tell us then what you are going to do if we are good?" said Bob entreatingly, "though you would not to-night."

"We'll see how the cat jumps!" replied the Captain with his cheery chuckling laugh as he marched out of the hall and down the steps with d.i.c.k after him; their retreating footsteps gradually dying away until they rounded the corner of the parade, the last sound heard being that of the ferrule of the Captain's malacca cane as it rang on the pavement, keeping time to the rhythm of his tread, and his voice repeating in the distance his quizzing rejoinder, "we'll see how the cat jumps!"

The 'cat' evidently did not 'jump' properly the next day, or, if it jumped at all, it executed that movement most decidedly in the wrong direction; for, when morning broke, much to Bob and Miss Nell's disgust, they found that a stormy south-easterly gale had set in, accompanied by smart showers of rain, which very unpleasant change in the aspect of the weather put all ideas of their going out entirely out of the question.

During the night, the wind, which had veered more to the eastwardly, rose considerably, drowning the clanging knell of the Spit buoy bell and rattling the windows and doors, like some desperate burglar on thoughts of plunder bent trying to effect a forcible entry.

Not satisfied with this alone, 'Rude Boreas' sent one of his imps down the chimney to frighten poor Nellie, who lay trembling in bed, by flapping up and down the register of the grate; while another would every now and then boldly rush up and grip hold of the house, shaking it viciously and causing it to rock from roof to bas.e.m.e.nt--the rebuffed rascal then sailing away with a shriek of disappointed spite and rage, moaning and groaning like a creature in pain as it went off to vent its malice elsewhere!

Ere long the sea, unable to keep its temper under the bad treatment it received from the wind, which blew in its face most insultingly and kept continually 'pitting and patting it,' baker-man fashion, in a very aggravating way, began to boil up in anger, lashing itself into a pa.s.sion and roaring with fury; while the noise Neptune made by and by deadened the roar of his a.s.sailant as he flung himself aloft in his struggles to grapple his nimble foe, and, missing his aim, rolled onward his boiling waves until they broke on the beach with the shock of an earthquake, amid a hurricane of foam!

The awesome sound of wave and sea combined kept Bob awake nearly all night, the same as it did poor Nellie; the noise being so strange to their London ears, although, in some respects, somewhat similar to that of the street traffic of the metropolis.

Not only did it keep him awake, but the battle of the elements made Master Bob get up much earlier than usual; for he came down to the drawing-room before Sarah had time to finish dusting the furniture.