t I have thought about all my life,"
he said, "and nobody could ever tell me. The bottom of the sea, that is
what I want most in the world to know about."

He paused, out of breath, and would have been abashed at his own
boldness, had not the Skipper's eyes told him so perfectly that they had
understood all about it, and that there was no sort of reason why he
should not ask all the questions he liked.

They were wonderful eyes, those of the Skipper. Most black eyes are
wanting in the depths that one sounds in blue, or gray, in brown, more
rarely in hazel eyes; they flash with an outward brilliancy, they soften
into velvet, but one seldom sees through them into the heart. But these
eyes, though black beyond a doubt, had the darkness of deep, still
water, when you look into it and see the surface mantling with a bluish
gloss, and beneath that depth upon depth of black--clear, serene,
unfathomable. And when a smile came into them,--ah, well! we all know
how that same dark water looks when the sun strikes on it. The sun
struck now, and little John felt warm and comfortable all through his
body and heart.

"The bottom of the sea?" said the Skipper, taking up a shell and
polishing it on his coat-sleeve. "Yes, that is a fine place, Colorado.
You mind not that I call you Colorado? It pleases me,--the name. A fine
place, truly. You have never seen the sea, young gentleman?"

The boy shook his head.

"Never, really!" he said. "I--I've dreamed about it a great deal, and I
think about it most of the time. There's a picture in my geography book,
just a piece of sea, and then broken off, so that you don't see any end
to it; that makes it seem real, somehow, I don't know why.

"But I've heard the sound of it!" he added, his face brightening.
"There's a shell in Mr. Scraper's parlour, on the mantelpiece, and
sometimes when he goes to sleep I can get it for a minute, and hold it
to my ear, and then I hear the sound, the sound of the sea."

"Yes," said the Skipper, taking up another shell from one of the
shelves, a tiger cowry, rich with purple and brown. "The sound of the
sea; that is a good thing. Listen here, young gentleman, and tell me
what the tiger say to you of the sea."

He held the shell to the boy's ear, and saw the colour and the light
come like a wave into his face. They were silent for a moment; then the
child spoke, low and dreamily.

"It doesn't say words, you know!" he said. "It's just a soft noise, like
what