to that hair-like fineness by sheer age.  He started at the sight of me, which caused him to drop a very large blot of ink from the very sharp point of the pen on to his paper.  I left him wiping it up with his handkerchief.  But it never struck me that he was writing a letter on the same subject as Fred and I had been writing about.  He was, however:  and Mr. Johnson keeps it tied up with Fred’s to this day.  The spelling was of about the same order.

     “MR. JOHNSON.  HONERD SIR.

“i rites in duty bound to acqaint you that the young genlemen is with me, looking out for Advenchurs and asking your pardon i wish they may find them as innercent as 2 Babes in the Wood on the London and Lancingford Canal were they come aboard quite unknown to me and blowed theirselves up with lucifers the fust go off and you’ve no need to trubble yourself sir ill keep my I on them and bring em safe to hand with return cargo and hoping you’ll excuse the stamp not expecting to have to rite from the fust stoppige your obedient humble servant

     “SAMUEL ROWE.”

As I have said, we did not suspect that Mr. Rowe had betrayed us by post; but in the course of the afternoon Fred said to me, “I’ll tell you what, Charlie, I know old Rowe well, and he’s up to any trick, and sure to want to keep in with my father.  If we don’t take care he’ll take us back with him.  And what fools we shall look then!”

The idea was intolerable; but I warned Fred to carefully avoid betraying that we suspected him.  The captain had had worse enemies to outwit, and had kept a pirate in good humour for a much longer voyage by affability and rum.  We had no means of clouding Mr. Rowe’s particularly sharp wits with grog, but we resolved to be amiable and wary, and when we did get to London to look out for the first opportunity of giving the barge-master the slip.

CHAPTER IX.

A COASTING VOYAGE—­MUSK ISLAND—­LINNET FLASH—­MR. ROWE AN OLD TAR—­THE DOG-FANCIER AT HOME.

It was a delightful feature of our first voyage—­and one which we could not hope to enjoy so often in voyages to come—­that we were always close to land, and this on both sides.  We could touch either coast without difficulty, and as the barge stopped several times during the day to rest the horse, Fred and I had more than one chance of going ashore.

I hope to have many a voyage yet, and to see stranger people and places than I saw then, but I hardly hope ever to enjoy myself so much again.  I have long ago found out that Fred’s stories of the captain’s adventures were not true stories, and as I have read and learned more about the world than I knew at that time, I know now that there are only certain things which one can meet with by land or by sea.  But when Fred and I made our first voyage in emulation of his grandfather there was no limit to my expectations, or to what we were prepared to see or experience at every fresh bend of the London and Lancingford Canal.