“Does you mean dose little black specks in de moon, missy?”

“No, Quady is one of the bright ones now; and you will be made white, too, when you go there.  Don’t you want to go and be one of those bright ones, Vingo?”

“Does all de white folks go dar?”

“Yes, if they love God when they are here; if they are good he will take them home to be with him.”

“Den I don’t tink I wants to go dar.”

“O, Vingo! that is very wicked!  Why don’t you want to go?”

“’Cause, missy, dey say old slabe massa am one ob de best men in de whole ob Berginny, and I’s ’fraid he catch Bingo and tie him up again.”

At that moment a shadow was seen in the distance, and Harry came bounding over the ground on the wings of the wind.

“Ah!  I thought I should find you here, Sea-flower, making the acquaintance of some of your sisters, as they hold up their heads in the moonlight.  Vingo, what do you think?  Father has received orders to sail in a week!”

“O, go way, massa Harry; what you mean by dat?” said Vingo, letting fall his lower jaw, while the whites of his eyes looked as if they had some time or other been in contact with a ghost.

“I mean that the Tantalizer will be ready for sea in a week, and Father will go master of her on a Cape Horn voyage.  O, if father would only let me go with him, how delighted I should be!  But he says I am too young, that I am not strong enough; yet I know of boys two or three years younger than I am, who have been around Cape Horn, and are now making a second voyage.  I have often heard old Captain Wendall tell of the first voyage father made, when he was but ten years old, and how nimbly he ran up to the mast-head, and was always the first to discover the whale as she spouted, and would sing out, ‘there she blows!’ equal to an old tar.  I must prevail on father to let me go with him.”

“Dear, dear Harry, do not talk so!  Only think how mother will feel to have father go!  He has been at home so long, ever since I was born, and how would she feel to have you both go away, and no one but Vingo and myself to comfort her.”

“No one but you to comfort her?  You are worth a dozen like me, darling!” and the little manly fellow threw his arms around her neck, and felt that he had the very best sister in the world.

“Ah! young massa, I tinks you hab de right sort ob spirit; you’s born to be no land-lubber; but it my ’pinion you had better stay wid good, kind missus and de Sea-flower a while longer; you not find a better berth, I’m tinkin’.”

“No, that I shall not; let me go where I will, I shall not find a mother like her; and as for Sea-flower, I don’t believe there was ever another in the whole ocean like her.”

“How funny you talk, Harry; you make me think of little Moses in the bulrushes.”

“Ah! there goes a gull, flying over my right shoulder, headed seaward; the sailor’s omen of good luck; perhaps father may change his mind, after all.”