was a small steam-yacht, only forty feet in length,
but furnished in a miniature way with most of the appliances of a
regular steamer.

She had a cabin twelve feet long, whose broad divans could be changed
into berths for the four principal personages on board of her. Abaft
this apartment was a standing-room with seating accommodations for eight
persons, or twelve with a little crowding, with luxurious cushions and
an awning overhead when needed.

Her pilot-house, engine-room, galley, and forecastle were as regular as
though she had been an ocean steamer of a thousand tons. Her ordinary
speed was ten knots an hour; but she could be driven up to twelve on an
emergency, and had even made a trifle more than this when an
extraordinary effort was required of the craft.

She had been built for a Moorish Pacha of the highest rank and of
unbounded wealth, who had ordered that no expense should be spared in
her construction and outfit. She was built of steel as strong as it was
possible to build a vessel of any kind; and in more than one heavy gale
on the Mediterranean she had proved herself to be an unusually able and
weatherly craft.

Though she had formerly been called the Salihe, her name had been
changed by her later American owners to the Maud. Everything about her
was as luxurious as it was substantial. She had a ship's company of
seven persons, only two of whom had reached and passed their majority,
the other five varying in age from fifteen to eighteen.

The principal personages were boys, three of them having attained the
mature age of eighteen, while the fourth was only fifteen. This quartet
sometimes called themselves the "Big Four," though it was a borrowed
designation, meaning something entirely different from its present
signification. Captain Scott had been the first to apply the term; and
he had done so simply because it tickled the tympanum of his ear, and it
really meant nothing at all.

The Maud was the consort, or more properly the tender, of the
Guardian-Mother, a steam-yacht of over six hundred tons' burden, now
engaged in making a voyage around the world. In a preceding volume it
was related in what manner Louis Belgrave became a millionaire, with
fifty per cent more than money enough to entitle him to this rather
indefinite appellation. How he happened to be the proprietor of one of
the finest steam-yachts that ever floated on the ocean was also
explained, through a somewhat complicated narrative