alternately damning his soul
and praying to his God. Paddy smoked.

"Whoop!" cried Dick. "Look, Paddy!"

An albicore a few cables-lengths to port had taken a flying leap from
the flashing sea, turned a complete somersault and vanished.

"It's an albicore takin' a buck lep. Hundreds I've seen before this;
he's bein' chased."

"What's chasing him, Paddy?"

"What's chasin' him? why, what else but the gibly-gobly ums!"

Before Dick could enquire as to the personal appearance and habits of
the latter, a shoal of silver arrow heads passed the boat and flittered
into the water with a hissing sound.

"Thim's flyin' fish. What are you sayin'?--fish can't fly! Where's the
eyes in your head?"

"Are the gibblyums chasing them too?" asked Emmeline fearfully.

"No; 'tis the Billy balloos that's afther thim. Don't be axin' me any
more questions now, or I'll be tellin' you lies in a minit."

Emmeline, it will be remembered, had brought a small parcel with her
done up in a little shawl; it was under the boat seat, and every now
and then she would stoop down to see if it were safe.

CHAPTER VII

STORY OF THE PIG AND THE BILLY-GOAT

Every hour or so Mr Button would shake his lethargy off, and rise and
look round for "seagulls," but the prospect was sail-less as the
prehistoric sea, wingless, voiceless. When Dick would fret now and
then, the old sailor would always devise some means of amusing him. He
made him fishing tackle out of a bent pin and some small twine that
happened to be in the boat, and told him to fish for "pinkeens"; and
Dick, with the pathetic faith of childhood, fished.

Then he told them things. He had spent a year at Deal long ago, where a
cousin of his was married to a boatman.

Mr Button had put in a year as a longshoreman at Deal, and he had got a
great lot to tell of his cousin and her husband, and more especially of
one, Hannah; Hannah was his cousin's baby--a most marvellous child, who
was born with its "buck" teeth fully developed, and whose first
unnatural act on entering the world was to make a snap at the
"docther." "Hung on to his fist like a bull-dog, and him bawlin'
`Murther!'"

"Mrs James," said Emmeline, referring to a Boston acquaintance, "had a
little baby, and it was pink."

"Ay, ay," said Paddy; "they're mostly pink to start with, but they fade
whin they're washed."

"It'd no teeth," said Emmeline, "for I put my finger in to see."

"The doctor brought it in a bag," put in