an to assume a wholesome look, and to be capable of
plowing the distant main. Then, when she was planked up, with a gunwale
on, and half-decked over forward, she was calked, and the seams payed
with pitch. When all ready for launching, early one morning the doctor
and the boy went gayly down to the cove. There, as the first golden rays
of the rising sun shot athwart the inlet, Henri stood up in the bows,
and with a large pearl-shell of pure spring water, he waved his tattered
bonnet round his curly locks, and with childish delight, as the vessel
began to move, he emptied the shell of its sparkling treasure, shouting,
as she slid off the ways into the basin, "_Ma petite cousine Rosalie!_"
The builder, too, took off his hat and shouted, in his deep bass, till
the rocks gave back the echo of "_Rosalie! Rosalie!_"

Thus was the ark launched and christened by her captain and crew,
and there she rode on the basin, a little pinnace of about ten tons,
which had been once used to carry anchors, chains, and stores about the
harbor. A week or two more, and she was fitted with a single mast,
stepped well in the bows, for a jib and one square lug-sail. Then
ballast in bags of sand was laid along her keelson, and a couple of
breakers of fresh water got on board, together with a quantity of
cooked salt meat and hard biscuit stowed away under the half-deck
forward--where, too, was a cozy little nest of spare canvas, with an
oakum pillow, for the boy! Yes, there lay the good ship "Rosalie,"
outward bound, with sails bent and gear rove, cargo on board, and
waiting for a wind.

Meanwhile the doctor had tried her under sail, and satisfied himself
that every thing worked well, and that she was in proper trim. Then he
moored her within a fathom from the shore, and waited for a moon to
light him on his voyage. Whither?

Carefully, too--like one who had passed a lifetime on the ocean, from
the China Seas to the broad Atlantic, under the suns of the tropics as
well as in the dim gloom of high latitudes--the doctor studied the
clouds and watched their course, noting the flight of the birds in the
air and the track of fish in the sea. At last the trade breezes began to
blow regularly and steadily; the land winds, too, in the gray of the
morning, fluttered timidly away out to sea, and the round pearly moon
shone bright and mellow over rock and water.

"To-morrow, my brave boy, we shall sail away from the island. Ah! you
clap your hands, eh? Ye