ris had found, his first day at sea, the conch shell Mr. Wicker had
mentioned, and he alone of all the _Mirabelle's_ crew knew how the
_Venture_ had fared.

[Illustration]

That first evening, in the little cabin Captain Blizzard had given
Chris and Amos, Chris had waited impatiently for Amos to sleep. The
two boys each had a hammock swung across the cabin by night which they
rolled up and put away to give more room by day. But that first night
poor Chris had begun to despair that he would ever hear Mr. Wicker's
voice from the shell, for Amos was excited and had no wish to go to
sleep. He swung back and forth, happy as a dark bird in his hammock,
his round eyes looking toward the porthole where there was a faint
gleam of night sea.

"Chris," Amos said, "we're sure going on a mighty far trip! That
Mister Finney, he showed me on a map, but I never heard of any of the
places we pass by. The Bahamas, he say to me, then the West Indies,
Cuba, Barbadoes"--he was ticking them off on his fingers as he named
them--"an' on to South America. Away down at the tippy end
around--what's the name of that loud-named place?"

"Cape Horn?" Chris said. He was scarcely listening.

Amos tried to prop himself up on his elbow and promptly fell out of
the hammock in a flurry of arms and legs and a heavy landing thump
that brought a shout of laughter from Chris. After an attempt at
making his bed again in the hammock, and some little difficulty in
clambering safely back in again, Amos composed himself with the least
possible movement in his swinging bed and yawned.

"I disremember," he said, "where else we're going. Wise Man islands,
or Solemn Islands--"

"You mean, Solomon Islands?" Chris asked him. Amos gave another mighty
yawn.

"That's what I said. Miss Becky, she read to me from the Bible about
Solemn, how wise he was." There was a pause. "On that way--" Amos's
voice was becoming indistinct.

"We go past the West Indian Islands next," Chris murmured, almost to
himself. "I remember that."

"And the Cell-Bees Sea," Amos said in a whisper.

"Celebes," Chris corrected softly.

"What I said," came Amos's voice, and then at last there was silence
in the cabin.

He almost got as far as the China Sea! Chris thought to himself, and
holding to the hammock, eased himself out and on bare feet went
quietly to his sea chest.

Its square bulk stood in the shadow of the wall, but fragments of
light from the night sky caught the brass na