Читать книгу Dick Rodney; or, The Adventures of an Eton Boy онлайн

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The captain and mate exchanged glances of inquiry.

"It's no use piping your eye now, my lad," said the former, coming toward my berth; "but answer me quietly. You said that your name was Rodney?"

"Yes."

"And you spoke of Erlesmere; are you a son of old Dr. Rodney, the rector?"

"Do you know my father, then?" I exclaimed.

"Can't say exactly that I have the honor of being known to him; but I know of him, right well. Why, Master Rodney, I have sailed your uncle's ships many a time, and know his gloomy old office in the city, as well as the buoy at the Nore; so you are as safe and as welcome aboard the Eugenie as if in the old Rectory-house at home."

This was pleasant intelligence, at all events; but my earnest desire was to return—a design which was not fated to be speedily gratified.

"The pain which is first felt when the infant branch is first torn from the parent tree," says Southey, in a passage of great beauty, "is one of the most poignant we have to endure through life; there are other griefs which wound more deeply, which leave behind them scars never to be effaced, which bruise the spirit and sometimes break the heart,—but never, never do we feel so much the want of love, and the keen necessity of being loved, as when we are first launched from the haven of our boyhood, into the wide and stormy sea of life!"