ound a white apron a good
deal soiled.

"Oh, I don't like that," she pouted. "It's not a bit clean. Good cooks
always have real clean aprons."

"There is a clean towel--you pin that on for an apron," suggested Bunny.
And then he did the pinning himself.

They were both down in the cabin, and Bunny was making believe he was
very hungry and he was asking Sue to bring him some more "plum duff"
when the little girl gave a sudden cry.

"What's the matter?" asked Bunny, as he sat at Captain Ross's cabin
table.

"We're moving!" cried Sue. "The _Fairy_ is moving away! She isn't fast
to the wharf any more!"

With a cry, Bunny scrambled up on deck.

Surely enough, the boat was adrift and he and Sue were alone on board!

CHAPTER VI

THE STRANGE DOG

Sue followed her brother Bunny up on the deck of the _Fairy_. They were
quite a distance out from the dock now, and were drifting farther and
farther each minute, for the tide was running out. Sandport Bay
connected with the ocean, and twice every day there is a great movement
of the water in the ocean, called the tide. The tides make the water
high twice each twenty-four hours, and then the tides get low, or run
out. The moon and sun are thought to cause the tides, as you will learn
when you get a little older and have to study about such things.

And the tide, after having run up into Sandport Bay, was now running
out, or ebbing, and in some way it was taking the _Fairy_ with it,
floating the boat along as the rain water in the gutter floats chips
along.

"How do you s'pose we got loose?" asked Sue.

"I don't know, lessen the rope came unhitched," Bunny answered. "But if
Cap'n Ross tied his boat to the dock, I don't see how it could come
unhitched."

Bunny was enough of a sailor to know that no boat captain ever tied such
a knot as could easily come loose. And yet this is what seemed to have
happened. For when Bunny and Sue ran to the side of the _Fairy_ to look
over, they saw, trailing in the water, the long rope, or cable, by which
the boat had been made fast to the dock. As Bunny had said, it had come
"unhitched." The children did not know how this had happened.

But there they were, alone on rather a large sailing boat, which also
had a gasolene motor, like that in a motor boat, to make it travel when
there was no wind to blow on the sails. And each moment they were being
carried by the tide farther and farther away from their father's dock.

Bunny a