Читать книгу The Sportsman's Club in the Saddle онлайн

9 страница из 40

The house in which Walter and Eugene lived looked like any other ordinary country house on the outside, and on the inside too, for that matter, except in one particular. Away up in the third story, next to the roof, was a room, the like of which, we venture to say, was never seen in any other dwelling. It belonged to Uncle Dick. It was a neat, cosy apartment, and if you had been conducted into it blindfolded, you would have thought, when you were permitted to use your eyes again, that you were in the cabin of some splendid vessel. Indeed, Uncle Dick intended that it should look as much like one as possible. He was an old sailor, cherishing an affection for the blue water that nothing could change, and he had been so long accustomed to life on shipboard that he found it hard work to stay ashore. His cabin reminded him of his ocean home, and it did not require a very great stretch of imagination for him to fancy himself still on board his vessel.

The apartment was just about the size of the cabin of an ordinary merchantman. There were three small windows on one side of it, and under them was a sofa, upon which Uncle Dick took his after-dinner nap as regularly as he did while he was the commander of a whaler. The windows on the other two sides were “bull’s eyes”—round, thick plates of glass enclosed in iron frames and set into the wall. Uncle Dick always kept these bull’s eyes open in fair weather, but as surely as a storm came up he would close and fasten them. One would hardly suppose that a great deal of rain could come in at these small openings, let the tempest be never so furious; but Uncle Dick always thought of the waves he had seen on the ocean. He said he did not want the sea to come rushing into his cabin and spoiling all his fine furniture. When we remind you that the house was three stories high, and tell you that it stood upon the top of a hill at least five hundred yards from the bay, you will know how much probability there was that salt water would ever wash in at those bull’s eyes.