d how all the party, after their first shipwreck in
the _Madras_, had embarked again in the ship's long boat, which the
Captain called the _Little Madras_.

"Are there any of those big animals here? you know that long name,"
asked Bo.

"Hippopotamuses?" said Yulee, promptly, delighted at the opportunity of
using the word. "Oh, no! there are no hippopotamuses in Clearwater; the
hippopotamuses only live in Africa."

"You never saw one, did you?" said Bo, who didn't like to use the word.

"No," said Yulee. "I never saw a hippopotamus, but I've seen an elephant
in the menagerie and I guess it's something like it. There's a picture
of one in the Castaways," and she showed it to Bo.

While they were talking, the wind and the current had been gently
drifting the boat away from the shore; they were quite a distance from
the stake now, and really going toward the island, which lay in the lake
not very far off. They had never been there for their father said there
was nothing to see on it; but Yulee was very certain in her own mind
that there was something on the island very wonderful. She had made up a
great many stories about it, which she had told over to herself so often
that she believed them as much as if some one else had told them to her.
She was sure that there were goats there at any rate and possibly a
parrot; and she was ready to believe in a cave, and perhaps even a small
mountain with a rope ladder up to the top like the one in "the
Castaways," though she rather thought she would have seen that if there
had been one, from the shore. The island could not be seen from the
house, nor from the boat-landing; it was round a curve in the lake.

The boat followed the current which led it slowly toward the island, and
Yulee was in ecstacies as they neared the shore. She sat in the bows of
the boat looking eagerly toward the island and trying to make out a good
place for a cave. But the land looked rather unpromising; it was low,
rising but little above the water, and covered with grass, a few low
bushes and one clump of trees. The boat did not seem able to get much
nearer the island, after it was within a few yards of it, and even
appeared to be drifting away. Yulee noticed this and began to be alarmed
lest they should not be cast away after all.

"Why don't we get wrecked?" asked Bo at this juncture, leaning over the
boat side and looking into the water which was hardly a foot deep here.

"There ought to be a great