arteret's Voyages, which, with the Bible and Prayer-book, formed the
only class-books of that singular school, were highly appreciated by
young and old alike, especially as read to them by Adams, who
accompanied his reading with a free running commentary of explanation,
which infused great additional interest into that old writer's book.
TOC rose with alacrity, displaying in the act the immense relative
difference between his very long legs and his ordinary body, in regard
to which Adams used to console him by saying, "Never mind, Toc, your
legs'll stop growin' at last, and when they do, your body will come out
like a telescope. You'll be a six-footer yet. Why, you're taller than
I am already by two inches."

In process of time Carteret was finished; it was then begun a second
time, and once more read through. After that Adams felt a chill feeling
of helplessness steal over him, for Carteret could not be read over and
over again like the Bible, and he could not quite see his way to reading
the Church of England prayers by way of recreation. In his extremity he
had recourse to Sally for advice. Indeed, now that Sall was approaching
young womanhood, not only the children but all the grown people of the
island, including their chief or "father," found themselves when in
trouble gravitating, as if by instinct, to the sympathetic heart and the
ready hand.

"I'll tell you what to do," said Sally, when appealed to, as she took
the seaman's rough hand and fondled it; "just try to invent stories, and
tell them to us as if you was readin' a book. You might even turn
Carteret upside down and pretend that you was readin'."

Adams shook his head.

"I never could invent anything, Sall, 'xcept w'en I was tellin' lies,
an' that's a long while ago now--a long, long while. No; I doubt that I
couldn't invent, but I'll tell 'ee what; I'll try to remember some old
yarns, and spin them off as well as I can."

The new idea broke on Adams's mind so suddenly that his eyes sparkled,
and he bestowed a nautical slap on his thigh.

"The very thing!" cried Sally, whose eyes sparkled fully more than those
of the sailor, while she clapped her hands; "nothing could be better.
What will you begin with?"

"Let me see," said Adams, seating himself on a tree-stump, and knitting
his brows with a severe strain of memory. "There's Cinderella; an'
there's Ally Babby or the fifty thieves--if it wasn't forty--I'm not
rightly sure which, but it do