The Cruise of the Dolphin(海豚的游弋).pdf

The Cruise of the Dolphin
The Cruise of the
Dolphin
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
1
The Cruise of the Dolphin
(1 An episode from The Story of a Bad Boy, the narrator being Tom
Bailey, the hero of the tale.)
Every Rivermouth boy looks upon the sea as being in some way
mixed up with his destiny. While he is yet a baby lying in his cradle, he
hears the dull, far-off boom of the breakers; when he is older, he wanders
by the sandy shore, watching the waves e plunging up the beach
like white-maned sea-horses, as Thoreau calls them; his eye follows the
lessening sail as it fades into the blue horizon, and he burns for the time
when he shall stand on the quarter-deck of his own ship, and go sailing
proudly across that mysterious waste of waters.
Then the town itself is full of hints and flavors of the sea. The gables
and roofs of the houses facing eastward are covered with red rust, like the
flukes of old anchors; a salty smell pervades the air, and dense gray fogs,
the very breath of Ocean, periodically creep up into the quiet streets and
envelop everything. 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 rowboat is his earliest ambition. No
wonder that I, born to this life, ing 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,