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 row-boat 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.

The fourth and remaining share hung fire.