Meanwhile young Tom Trevarthen had brought the children under the vessel's side, and was helping Clem up the ladder. Mrs. Purchase greeted them with a kiss apiece, and carried them off to the cabin, where they found Mr. Purchase eating bread and cream. Skipper Purchase, a smart seaman in his day and a first-class navigator, had for a year or two been gradually weakening in the head; a decline which his wife noted, though she kept her anxiety to herself. She foresaw with a pang the end of their voyaging, and watched him narrowly, having made a compact with herself to interfere before he imperilled the _Virtuous Lady_. Hitherto, however, his wits had unfailingly cleared to meet an emergency. While she could count upon this, she knew herself competent to rule the ship in all ordinary weather. "Help yourselves to cream," said Mr. Purchase, after giving them good-morning. "Clever men tell me there's more nourishment in a pound o' cream than in an ox. Now that may seem marvellous in your eyes?" He paused with a wavering, absent-minded smile. "'Tis the most nourishing food in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms,--unless you count parsnips." "T'cht!" his wife put in briskly, banging down a couple of clean teacups on the swing-table. "Children don't want a passel o' science in their insides. Milk or weak tea, my dears?" "I don't know," the skipper went on after another long pause, bringing his Uncertain eyes to bear on Clem, "if you've ever taken note what astonishing things folks used to eat in the Bible. There's locusts, and wild honey, and unleavened bread--I made out a list of oddments one time. Nebbycannezzar don't count, of course; but Ezekiel took down a whole book in the shape of a roll." Mrs. Purchase signed to Myra to pay no heed, and engaged Clem in a sort of quick-firing catechism on the cabin fittings, their positions and uses. The boy, who had been on board but once in his life before, stretched out a hand and touched each article as she named it. "The lamp, now?" Clem reached up at once and laid his fingers on it, gently as a butterfly alights on a flower. "How does it swing?" "On gimbals." "Eh? and what may gimbals be?" "There's a ring fastened here,"--the boy's fingers found it--"and swinging to and fro; and inside the ring is a bar, holding the lamp so that it tips to and fro crossways to the ring. You weight the bottom of the lamp, and then it keeps plumb upright however the ship moves." "Wunnerful memory you've got, to be sure--and your gran'father tells me you can't even read!" "But he knows his letters," Myra announced proudly; "and when the new teacher comes he's to go to school with me. Susannah says so." "How in the world did you teach'n his letters, child?"