you thought you might. Are you
afraid now?"

"Not a bit, uncle. I am ready to start to-morrow morning."

"Ah, well, you won't, my boy, for there's everything to do first."

"Everything to do?"

"Of course. It's not like taking a few bottles and pill-boxes and a net
or two to go up on the moor. Why, there's our ship to find first, and
then to get her fitted with our nets and sounding-lines and dredges and
all sorts of odds and ends, with reserves and provisions for all that we
lose. Then there's to collect a crew."

"Oh, there'll be plenty of fellows down by the Barbican or hanging about
down there who will jump at going."

"Don't you be so precious sanguine, my fine fellow. This will be all so
fresh that the men won't be so ready as you expect. The first thing a
seaman will ask will be, `Where are we bound? What port?'"

"Well, uncle; tell them."

"Tell them what I don't know myself unless I say Port Nowhere on the
High Seas! It will be all a matter of chance, Pickle, where we go and
what we do, and I may as well say it now, if any one gets asking you
what we are going to do, your answer is included in just these few
words--We are going to explore."

Rodd nodded in a short business-like way.

"All right, uncle; I'll remember," he cried promptly. "Then you are
going to hire a ship and engage a crew?"

"Well," said Uncle Paul thoughtfully, "we are landsmen--I mean landsman
and a boy--but we may as well begin to be nautical at once and call
things by the sea-going terms. No, my boy, I am not going to engage a
ship--too big."

"Why, you won't go all that way in a lugger, uncle?"

"Bah! Rubbish!" cried Uncle Paul shortly. "Here, give me hold of that
glass."

He took the telescope, drew out the slide to a mark upon the tube which
indicated the focus which suited his eye, and then as he began slowly
sweeping the portions of the harbour which were within reach he went on
talking.

"Isn't there anything between a lugger and a ship, sir? You know well
enough if you talk to a sailor about a ship he'd suppose you meant a
full-rigged three-masted vessel."

"Yes, of course, uncle. And a barque is a three-master with a mizzen
fore-and-aft rigged."

"That's better, my lad. But what do you mean by fore-and-aft rigged?"

"Well, like a schooner, uncle."

"Good boy! Go up one, as you used to say at school. Well, what do you
think of a large schooner for a good handy vessel that can be well
manage