-nots_ fender as if to nudge
her. "There's the _Maria Stella Maris_ yonder can tell us a tale of the
food they store us with. She went through a mutiny once, I've heard."

"I'd rather not talk of it," put in the Italian hastily, and a shudder
ran through her timbers. "It's a dreadful recollection, and I have that
by my mizzen-mast which all the holystone in the world can never scour."

"But I've had a mutiny, too!" said the Dutch galliot, with a voice of
great importance; and this time the boy felt sure that the vessels
nudged one another.

"It happened," the galliot went on, "between my skipper and his _vrauw_,
who was to all purpose our mate, and as good a mate as ever I sailed
with. But she would not believe the world was round. The skipper took
a Dutch cheese and tried to explain things: he moved the cheese round,
as it might be, from west to east, and argued and argued, until at last,
being a persevering man, he did really persuade her, but it took a whole
voyage, and by the time he succeeded we were near home again, and in the
North Sea Canal. The moment she was convinced, what must the woman do
but go ashore to an aunt of hers who lived at Zaandam, and refuse to
return on board, though her man went on his bended knees to her!
'I will not,' she said; 'and _that's_ flat, at any rate.' The poor man
had to start afresh, undo every one of his arguments, and prove the
earth flat again, before she would trust herself to travel. It cost us
a week, but for my part I didn't grudge it. Your cliffs and deep-water
harbours don't appeal to me. Give me a canal with windmills and
summer-houses where you can look in on the families drinking tea as you
sail by; give me, above all, a canal on Sundays, when the folks walk
along the towing-path in their best clothes, and you feel as if you were
going to church with them."

"Give me rather," said the Norwegian barque from Christiansund,
"a fiord with forests running straight up to the snow mountains, and
water so deep that no ship's anchor can reach it."

"I have seen most waters," the Dane announced calmly and proudly.
"As you see, I am very particular about my paint, for a ship ought to
keep up her beauty and look as young as she can. But I have an ice-mark
around my breast which is usually taken for a proof of experience, and
as a philosopher I say that all waters are tolerable enough if one
carries the talisman."

"But can a ship be beautiful?" and "What is the ta