I shall not tell you how Harry acted when he came up; how he laughed and shouted, and waved his oar-blade in the air; and then how kindly and gently he lowered me down, and laid me in his boat; and when I told him the whole story, and how his boat had gone to the bottom, instead of being angry with me, he only laughed, and said it was well it had been no worse; and from that day not a syllable of reproach ever passed his lips--not a word about the lost dinghy. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. FOR PERU--TO-MORROW! Even this narrow escape had no effect. I was not more afraid of the water than ever; but _rather liked_ it all the more on account of the very excitement which its dangers produced. Very soon after I began to experience a longing to see foreign lands, and to travel over the great ocean itself. I never cast my eyes out upon the bay, that this yearning did not come over me; and when I saw ships with their white sails, far off upon the horizon, I used to think how happy they must be who were on board of them; and I would gladly have exchanged places with the hardest-working sailor among their crews. Perhaps I might not have felt these longings so intensely had I been happy at home--that is, had I been living with a kind father and gentle mother; but my morose old uncle took little interest in me; and there being, therefore, no ties of filial affection to attach me to home, my longings had full play. I was compelled to do a good deal of work on the farm, and this was a sort of life for which I had no natural liking. The drudgery only increased my desire to go abroad--to behold the wonderful scenes of which I had read in books, and of which I had received still more glowing accounts from sailors, who had once been fishermen in our village, and who occasionally returned to visit their native place. These used to tell us of lions, and tigers, and elephants, and crocodiles, and monkeys as big as men, and snakes as long as ships' cables, until their exciting stories of the adventures they had experienced among such creatures filled me with an enthusiastic desire to see with my own eyes these rare animals, and to take part in the chasing and capturing of them as the sailors themselves had done. In short, I became very tired of the dull monotonous life which I was leading at home, and which I then supposed was peculiar to our own country; for, according to our sailor-visitors, in every other part of the world there was full store of stirring adventures, and wild animals, and strange scenes.