The youth of Barnegat--
the very young youth, ranging from nine to twelve,
and all boys--received the news at first with hilarious
joy. This feeling soon gave way to unsuppressed
indignation, followed by an active bitterness, when
they realized in solemn conclave--the meeting was
held in an open lot on Saturday morning--that the
capture of the craft had been accomplished, not by
dwellers under Barnegat Light, to whom every piece
of sea-drift from a tomato-can to a full-rigged ship
rightfully belonged, but by a couple of aliens, one of
whom wore knee-pants and a white collar,--a distinction
in dress highly obnoxious to these lords of the
soil.
All these denizens of Barnegat had at one time
or another climbed up the sloop's chains and peered
down the hatchway to the sand covering the keelson,
and most of them had used it as a shelter behind
which, in swimming-time, they had put on or peeled
off such mutilated rags as covered their nakedness,
but no one of them had yet conceived the idea of
turning it into a Bandit's Home. That touch of
the ideal, that gilding of the commonplace, had been
reserved for the brain of the curly-haired boy who,
with dancing eyes, his sturdy little legs resting on
Tod's shoulder, had peered over the battered rail,
and who, with a burst of enthusiasm, had shouted:
"Oh, cracky! isn't it nice, Tod! It's got a place we
can fix up for a robbers' den; and we'll be bandits
and have a flag.
Pages:
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236