Later on, as the weather grew warmer, we indulged in more adventurous, and let it be admitted, more enjoyable, sport. Walnut boats and paper junks ballasted with shot might be well enough for the cold months or wet afternoons, but when the summer called us out to play, our ambitious hearts desired weightier craft than these. Then the yachts that uncles had given us, which had been cruising peacefully on the playroom floor during the indoor weeks, were brought out and considered in their new aspect. There was always something at once thrilling and disappointing about these stately ships. The height of their masts, the intricacy of their rigging, and the little lines that marked the planks of their deck, filled us with pride, and made us seek the nearest pond with quick, elated steps. But these things might be as well admired indoors, and somehow these boats never sailed as well on any wakeful pond as they did on the waters of our dreams. There they were for ever tossing on the crests of enormous waves, and all night long their great masts went crashing by the board; but on Pickhurst Pond they behaved with a staid monotony, and while we and the boats of our hands had as many moods as the spring, these official craft were content to perform their business of sailing with the conscientious precision of grown-up persons. There was more to be said for the modest sort of boat you would buy for sixpence or a shilling. They had a useless mast and sail (the boat capsized if you set it), seats that were annoying but easily removed, and sometimes, as a crowning piece of Philistinism, oars! We would have scorned to give a moment’s consideration to a rowing boat at any time. We wanted only craft that were fit to cruise with equal adroitness on boundless oceans and unhealthy tropic rivers, and, lacking a hold, where should we keep the rum and the pieces of eight? But if you threw away everything but the bare hull, and painted that black, you had a very sound basis for sensible boat-building. A tin railway carriage would make a cabin, a wooden brick the quarter-deck, and if you could find some lead for the keel you might give the vessel a real mast with which to strike the southern stars.