attresses for our hammocks, which, when fully inflated, were capable of
sustaining the weight of three men each in the water. Another article
was a cooking-stove, the smallest, lightest, and most compact thing of
the kind I ever saw.

It had a boiler capable of heating a quart of water, and an oven large
enough to bake a fowl, with kettle, saucepan, etcetera, for the top.
The grate proper was filled with fragments of some substance, the name
of which I have forgotten, and underneath the grate was a sliding tray
which held a six-wicked lamp. The lamp being lighted and placed in
position, speedily raised the substance in the grate to a state of
incandescence, and there was our fire, which gave out a tremendous heat
for the size of the grate. As an aid to this stove, and an economiser
of fuel, we purchased also a most extraordinary invention, which was
named the "Norwegian cooking-stove" if I remember rightly.

This was not a stove at all, though it performed the functions of one.
It was simply a _box_, so constructed that it retained all the heat your
dish might happen to contain when placed in it. The mode of operation
was to place your fowl or pie, or what not, in the oven until it was
thoroughly hot through, then take it out, place it in the "Norwegian,"
shut it up for two or three hours, take it out, and lo! your dinner was
cooked to perfection. The fuel which this affair saved us during the
voyage would have bought a dozen of them. We spent a week looking about
for such things as these, and I am confident that, but for the economy
of space which we were able to secure through the aid of these
contrivances, our voyage must have come to a sudden and ignominious
conclusion.

At length we were all ataunto; sails stretched to perfection and
properly bent, our _impedimenta_ all carefully and snugly stowed, and
everything ready for a start. At the instigation and through the
kindness of some yachting friends of mine, I had been introduced to and
was elected a member of the Royal--Yacht Club; so one fine morning
towards the latter end of July we loosed our sails, set them, ran our
Club burgee up to the mast-head and the ensign up to the peak, and made
a start for Weymouth. At the last moment Mr Wood, the builder of our
little craft, came on board, saying that as he had nothing very pressing
for the day, and was curious to see something of the way in which the
_Water Lily_ behaved, he would take a passage with us as