d Drake should testify their pleasure in such eccentric
ways.--And look here, Walter: when you wish to turn acrobat again, let
it not be in this library or over those chairs; choose some piece of
green grass out of doors.--Well, boys, _perhaps_ you can pass the summer
at the cape. I do not promise it, but shall try to arrange it so if
your mother is willing; but under the unfailing condition that you make
good progress in your studies until that time."

"Shall we all be there together, father, and for the whole summer, and
without any school? How delightful!"

"Not too fast, Drake. Without school? What an idea! Why, in six
months you would be as wild and ignorant as the sheep there. No; you
shall have a strict tutor, who will keep you in harness, and help Walter
to prepare for going up next year to Cambridge. But only you three will
be there. I have some business in London, and I shall take your mother
and Aggie and Charley with me."

During those February evenings there were many more conversations on the
same subject, full of interest to us boys, and finally it was fully
decided by our father and mother that we should go in May, and stay
there until autumn; that a certain Mr Clare should be our tutor, and
that Clump and Juno should be our housekeepers and victuallers.

Never did a springtime appear longer and more wearisome. We counted
every day, and were disgusted with March for having thirty-one of them.
What greatly increased our impatience and the splendour of our
anticipation was that, some time in March, our father told us that a
brig had been cast away in a curious manner on the shore of the cape,
and that he had purchased the wreck as it lay, well preserved and firmly
held in the rocks above ordinary high-tide. He proposed, at some future
time, to make use of it as a sort of storehouse, or perhaps dwelling for
labourers. A shipwreck! a real wreck! and on our cape! stranded on the
very shore of our Robinson Crusoe-like paradise! Just imagine our
excitement.

The particulars of the wreck were as follows:--A brig of 300 tons
burden, on a voyage from South America to the Thames, having lost her
reckoning in consequence of several days' heavy gale and thick weather,
suddenly made the light on the Lizard, and as quickly lost it again in
the fog which surrounded her. The captain, mistaking the light he had
seen for some other well-known beacon, set his course accordingly. That
was near nine o'clock