d got stuck in the mud while we were pushing off. "Sailing is
much easier when you get out into the open sea. There aren't so many
silly things to bump into."

For me indeed it was a great and wonderful feeling, that getting out
into the open sea, when at length we passed the little lighthouse at the
mouth of the river and found ourselves free of the land. It was all
so new and different: just the sky above you and sea below. This ship,
which was to be our house and our street, our home and our garden, for
so many days to come, seemed so tiny in all this wide water--so tiny and
yet so snug, sufficient, safe.

I looked around me and took in a deep breath. The Doctor was at the
wheel steering the boat which was now leaping and plunging gently
through the waves. (I had expected to feel seasick at first but
was delighted to find that I didn't.) Bumpo had been told off to go
downstairs and prepare dinner for us. Chee-Chee was coiling up ropes in
the stern and laying them in neat piles. My work was fastening down
the things on the deck so that nothing could roll about if the weather
should grow rough when we got further from the land. Jip was up in the
peak of the boat with ears cocked and nose stuck out--like a statue, so
still--his keen old eyes keeping a sharp look-out for floating wrecks,
sand-bars, and other dangers. Each one of us had some special job to do,
part of the proper running of a ship. Even old Polynesia was taking the
sea's temperature with the Doctor's bath-ther-mometer tied on the end of
a string, to make sure there were no icebergs near us. As I listened
to her swearing softly to herself because she couldn't read the pesky
figures in the fading light, I realized that the voyage had begun in
earnest and that very soon it would be night--my first night at sea!

THE THIRD CHAPTER. OUR TROUBLES BEGIN

JUST before supper-time Bumpo appeared from downstairs and went to the
Doctor at the wheel.

"A stowaway in the hold, Sir," said he in a very business-like seafaring
voice. "I just discovered him, behind the flour-bags."

"Dear me!" said the Doctor. "What a nuisance! Stubbins, go down with
Bumpo and bring the man up. I can't leave the wheel just now."

So Bumpo and I went down into the hold; and there, behind the
flour-bags, plastered in flour from head to foot, we found a man. After
we had swept most of the flour off him with a broom, we discovered that
it was Matthew Mugg. We hauled him upstairs sn