264 ALL ABOARD FOR SUNRISE LANDS.

castle, seemg Jack Bobstay in the door, mending his pants, they
stopped for a little chat. ‘‘ Have you seen the latest improvement,
sir!”

“No, I haven’t, Jack.”

Jack pointed out Rick’s autumn-picture on the wall.

“You don’t know how that brightens things, cap’n.”

“Y-e-s,” said Uncle Nat, as if occupied with other thoughts. He
was saying to himself: “Tf my nephew is doing something here, why
doesn’t the uncle ?” .

“Jack, this for’c’stle looks dirty, and I wonder if we can’t fix it
up? How would an oil-cloth look on the floor—bright and prety?
Would the men like it?”

“Like it! I guess so; and I believe it would set us to improving
the place all we could.”

“T would paint it, but it would make a dirty job for you now.
I might touch it a little overhead’””— and he looked at the dirty
funnel-hole —“‘and when in port we will paint it gay.”

“Cap'n, we will have a ‘For’c’stle Improvement Society,’ and do.
our best, sir.”

The crew took a great interest in the plan. The floor was scrubbed,
bunks were scrubbed, walls were scrubbed; the captain sent a few
pictures from a lot he had in his stateroom, adding the oil-cloth
for the floor, and a paint-brush, “to touch up here and there,” and
putting in a cushioned settee, also.

“Amazin’,” soliloquized Jack Bobstay, as he faced Rick’s picture,
“what a little beginnin’ may lead to, and especially a beginnin’ | by
a child.”

Uncle Nat was a Christian by name and at heart. He believed
in treating, a sailor as a man, and tried to sail his ship by the chart
of -the Golden Rule. Some sailors tried to take advantage