off to the dock.

The weather had grown fitful. Heavy clouds whirled over, trailing
snow-flurries. Rarely the sun found a cleft in the black canopy to shoot
a ray through and remind the world that he was still in his place and
ready to shine when he was wanted.

Master Perry had a furlong to go before he reached the dock. He crossed
the stream, kept unfrozen by the warm influences of the Foundry. He ran
through a little dell hedged on each side by dull green cedars. It was
severely cold now, and our young friend condescended to prance and jump
over the ice-skimmed puddles to keep his blood in motion.

The little rusty, pudgy steamboat lay at the down-stream side of the
Foundry wharf. Her name was so long and her paddle-box so short, that
the painter, beginning with ambitious large letters, had been compelled
to abbreviate the last syllable. Her title read thus:--

I. AMBUSTER.

Certainly a formidable inscription for a steamboat!

When she hove in sight, Perry halted, resumed his stately demeanor, and
em-barked as if he were a Doge entering a Bucentaur to wed a Sea.

There was nobody on deck to witness the arrival and salute the
_magnifico_.

Perry looked in at the Cap'n's office. He beheld a three-legged stool,
a hacked desk, an inky steel-pen, an inkless inkstand; but no Cap'n
Ambuster.

Perry inspected the Cap'n's state-room. There was a cracked
looking-glass, into which he looked; a hair-brush suspended by the
glass, which he used; a lair of blankets in a berth, which he had no
present use for; and a smell of musty boots, which nobody with a nose
could help smelling. Still no Captain Ambuster, nor any of his crew.

Search in the unsavory kitchen revealed no cook, coiled up in a corner,
suffering nightmares for the last greasy dinner he had brewed in his
frying-pan. There were no deck hands bundled into their bunks. Perry
rapped on the chain-box and inquired if anybody was within, and nobody
answering, he had to ventriloquize a negative.

The engine-room, too, was vacant, and quite as unsavory as the other
dens on board. Perry patronized the engine by a pull or two at the
valves, and continued his tour of inspection.

The Ambuster's skiff, lying on her forward deck, seemed to entertain him
vastly.

"Jolly!" says Perry. And so it was a jolly boat in the literal, not the
technical sense.

"The three wise men of Gotham went to sea in a bowl; and here's the
identical craft," says Perry.

He gave the ch