rt in moving it along.

"What a dear old-fashioned thing," exclaimed Marjorie, directly she saw
it.

The Skipper looked rather hurt. "It isn't more than a thousand years
old," he remarked.

"Well, that's an awful long time for a ship to last, isn't it?" said
Marjorie, pleasantly.

"Our family is much older than that," chimed in the Dodo,
consequentially. "We date back to----"

"Oh, please don't go into ancient history," said the Skipper, "I can't
bear it; it reminds me so of my younger days, when I was first learning
to skip."

"What _do_ you mean?" asked the children.

"Why, when I was a little boy, you know," explained the Skipper, "I used
to skip all the dry parts of a book--and the pages and pages I used to
skip of my ancient history you'd never believe. It was that which
decided my parents upon making me a Skipper. 'He'll never do for
anything else,' they used to say?"

"Well, are you going aboard or not?" he added, "because, if so, we ought
to be starting."

"Oh, yes, let's go," pleaded Marjorie, "we might just as well be on
board as at this place, you know, and we shall, at any rate, be going
somewhere, and perhaps we shall find some one who knows the way to
England on the sea."

So the children and the Dodo went aboard, and the Skipper blew a little
whistle, which he wore tied around his neck by a white cord, and the
sailors all came running up, bringing their spinning wheels, which they
packed away at the bow of the vessel, and then settled themselves down
at the oars. At the other end was a cosy little cabin, and above it a
small deck, upon which the little passengers made themselves quite
comfortable, and the Captain ordered the scales to be brought up from
below.

"What are they for?" asked Dick, who, boy-like, always wanted to know
the reason for everything.

"To weigh the anchor with," explained the Skipper, seriously. "We always
have to weigh it when we start on a voyage, and again when we reach our
journey's end."

"What for?" asked Dick, who certainly remembered having heard the
expression "weighing the anchor" before.

"Oh, I don't know, I'm sure," said the Skipper; "pack of nonsense, I
calls it; but it's the custom, and it's got to be done."

So the anchor was duly weighed, and the exact weight put down in a book,
and the _Argosy_, as the ship was called, slowly moved out of the
harbor.

It was a beautiful day, but there was just a little breeze blowing, and
the sea was a littl