rts. He answered my
hail rather solemnly.

"See here! When this stuff's all stowed, where are we going to sit? That's
what's worrying me."

"Why, won't it go in?"

"Go! It wouldn't go in two boats."

I came down the plank. "Well, let's eliminate."

We eliminated. We took out extra shoes and coats and "town clothes," we
cut down as far as we dared, and expressed a big bundle home. The rest we
got into two sailor's dunnage bags, one waterproof, the other nearly so,
and one big water-tight metal box. Then there were the guns, and the
provisions, and the charts in a long tin tube, and there was a lantern--a
clumsy thing, which we lashed to a seat. It was always in the way and
proved of very little use, but we thought we ought to take it.

While we worked, some loungers gathered on the wharf above and watched us
with that tolerant curiosity that loungers know so well how to assume. As
we got in and took up our oars, one of them called out, "Now, if you only
had a little motor there in the stern, you'd be all right."

"Don't want one," said Jonathan.

"What? Why not?"

"Go too fast."

"Eh? What say?"

"Go--too--fast."

"He heard you," I said, "but he can't believe you really said it."

The oars fell into unison, there was the dip of their blades, the grating
chunk of the rowlocks--_dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk_. As we fell into our
stroke the little boat began to respond, the water swished at her bows and
gurgled under her stern. The wharf fell away behind us, the houses back of
it came into sight, then the wooded hills behind. The whole town began to
draw together, with its church steeples as its centers.

"She does go!" remarked Jonathan.

"I told you! Look at us now! Look at that buoy!"

_Dip-ke-chunk, dip-ke-chunk_--the red buoy swept by us and dropped into the
blue background of dancing waves.

"Are we really off? Is it really happening?" I said joyously.

"Do you like it?" said Jonathan over his shoulder.

"No. Do you?" To such unwisdom of speech do people come when they are
happy.

But there were circumstances to steady us.

"What I'm wondering," said Jonathan, "is, what's going to happen next--when
we get out there." He tilted his head toward the open bay, broad and
windy, ahead of us. "There's some pretty interesting water out there
beyond this lee."

"Oh, she'll take it all right. It's no worse than Nantucket water. It
couldn't be. You'll see."

We did see. In half an hour we were in the