Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/66

 Mother Nature, lads, and don't try. Horse sense and happiness, lads, them's the words."

He seated himself under six eager eyes, and began to puff vigorously on his pipe.

"Tell me you used to be a sailor," began Legs.

Captain Buffum refilled and relighted his pipe, and putting on his most knowing look, proceeded: "They told you right, lad, they told you right. A sailor I was and, though my old body is tied down in this hyuh lighthouse, my mind is a-sailing the sea right this minute. I was born at sea, and I reckon that first salt spray I took in when I opens my mouth to tell 'em I'd come must 'a give me a taste I couldn't never git over. Then I growed up in a seaport as nigh to the water as where I'm sittin' here. I growed up with the salt air in my lungs, lads."

Captain Buffum nodded his head in the direction of the ocean. "When I fust seed the vessels in the harbor," he continued, "the sea drawed me, and she kept a drawin' me till I was eighteen year old, and then I says to my father, 'I'm a-goin' to sea,' And he says to me, 'Bill, you're a danged fool!' And says I, 'I knows