As for Ford, that young gentleman was wise enough, with all those eyes watching him, not to try any thing that he was not sure of; though he carefully explained to Annie, “Dab is captain, you know.  I’m under his orders to-day.”

Dick Lee was hardly the wisest fellow in the world, for he added encouragingly,—­

“And you’s doin’ tip-top, for a green hand, you is.”

The wind was blowing right off shore, and did not seem to promise any thing more than a smart breeze.  It was easy enough to handle the little craft in the inlet; and in a marvellously short time she was dancing out upon the blue waves of the spreading “bay.”  It was a good deal more like a land-locked “sound” than any sort of a bay, with that long, low, narrow sand-island cutting it off from the ocean.

“I don’t wonder Ham Morris called her the ‘Swallow,’” said Ford.  “How she skims!  Can you get in under the deck, there, forward?  That’s the cabin.”

“Yes, that’s the cabin,” replied Dab.  “But Ham had the door put in with a slide, water-tight.  It’s fitted with rubber.  We can put our things in there, but it’s too small for any thing else.”

“What’s it made so tight for?”

“Oh!  Ham says he’s made his yacht a life-boat.  Those places at the sides and under the seats are all water-tight.  She might capsize, but she’d never sink.  Don’t you see?”

“I see.  How it blows!”

“It’s a little fresh, now we are getting away from under the land.  How’d you like to be wrecked?”

“Good fun,” said Ford.  “I got wrecked on the cars the first time I came over here.”

“On the cars?”

“Why, yes.  I forgot to tell you about that.”

Then followed a very vivid and graphic account of the sad fate of the pig and the locomotive.  The wonder was, how Ford should have failed to give Dab that story before.  No such failure would have been possible if his head and tongue had not been so wonderfully busy about so many other things, ever since his arrival.

“I’m glad it was I instead of Annie,” he said at length.

“Of course.  Didn’t you tell me she came through all alone?”

“Yes; and she didn’t like it much, either.  Travelled all night.  She ran away from those cousins of mine.  Oh, but won’t I pay them off when I get to Grantley!”

“Where’s that?  What did they do?”

“The Swallow” was flying along nicely now, with Dab at the tiller, and Dick Lee tending sail; and Dab could listen with all his ears to Ford’s account of his sister’s tribulations, and the merciless “practical jokes” of the Hart boys.

“Ain’t they older and bigger than you?” asked Dabney, as Ford closed his recital.  “What can you do with two of them?”

“They can’t box worth a cent, and I can.  Anyhow, I mean to teach them better manners.”

“You can box?”

“Had a splendid teacher.  Put me up to all sorts of things.”