ousands of pesetas. Not bad, you know--not bad."

PART FOUR

THE FIRST CHAPTER. SHELLFISH LANGUAGES AGAIN

MIRANDA, the Purple Bird-of-Paradise had prophesied rightly when she had
foretold a good spell of weather. For three weeks the good ship Curlew
plowed her way through smiling seas before a steady powerful wind.

I suppose most real sailors would have found this part of the voyage
dull. But not I. As we got further South and further West the face
of the sea seemed different every day. And all the little things of
a voyage which an old hand would have hardly bothered to notice were
matters of great interest for my eager eyes.

We did not pass many ships. When we did see one, the Doctor would get
out his telescope and we would all take a look at it. Sometimes he would
signal to it, asking for news, by hauling up little colored flags upon
the mast; and the ship would signal back to us in the same way. The
meaning of all the signals was printed in a book which the Doctor kept
in the cabin. He told me it was the language of the sea and that all
ships could understand it whether they be English, Dutch, or French.

Our greatest happening during those first weeks was passing an iceberg.
When the sun shone on it it burst into a hundred colors, sparkling like
a jeweled palace in a fairy-story. Through the telescope we saw a mother
polar bear with a cub sitting on it, watching us. The Doctor recognized
her as one of the bears who had spoken to him when he was discovering
the North Pole. So he sailed the ship up close and offered to take her
and her baby on to the Curlew if she wished it. But she only shook her
head, thanking him; she said it would be far too hot for the cub on the
deck of our ship, with no ice to keep his feet cool. It had been indeed
a very hot day; but the nearness of that great mountain of ice made us
all turn up our coat-collars and shiver with the cold.

During those quiet peaceful days I improved my reading and writing a
great deal with the Doctor's help. I got on so well that he let me keep
the ship's log. This is a big book kept on every ship, a kind of diary,
in which the number of miles run, the direction of your course and
everything else that happens is written down.

The Doctor too, in what spare time he had, was nearly always writing--in
his note-books. I used to peep into these sometimes, now that I could
read, but I found it hard work to make out the Doctor's handwriting.
Ma