“JAN. 7.—­The day is calm.  I began to read ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’  I like it.  The captain’s wife was going to train the wild-cat when it bit her—­but not very hard.

“8.—­There was not much wind to-day.  We fished for sea-gulls and caught four.  I caught one and let it go again.  Two hens flew overboard.  The sailors in a boat got one of them; the gulls killed one.

“9.—­The day has been rather gloomy.  I caught another sea-gull but let him go again.  On deck nearly all day.

“10.—­The cockatoo sits on deck and talks and talks.

“11.—­It makes me feel bad when I think of home.  I want to be there.”

The long, long weary days dragged on.  It is thought worth while to note that there were fresh eggs for breakfast, fresh pork for dinner, fresh chicken for supper; that a porpoise had been captured, and that his carcass yielded “three gallons of oil as good as sperm oil”; that no ship had been seen—­“no sail from day to day”; that they were in the latitude of Panama; that it was squally or not squally, as the case might be; that on one occasion they captured “four barrels of oil,” the flotsam of some ill-fated whaler, and that it all proved “very exciting”; that a dolphin was captured, and that he died in splendor, passing through the whole gamut of the rainbow—­that the words of tradition might be fulfilled; that the hens had suffered no sea-change, but had contributed from a dozen to two dozen eggs per day.  Still stretched the immeasurable waste of waters to the horizon line on every hand.  Day by day the small boy made his entries; but he seemed to be running down, like a clock, and needed winding up.  This is how his record dwindled: 

“JAN. 20.—­The day is very pleasant, with some wind.  We crossed the equator.  I sat up in one of the boats a long time.  I wish my little brothers were here to play with me.

“21.—­The day is very pleasant, with a good breeze.  We are going ten or eleven knots an hour.

“22.—­The day is very pleasant.  A nine-knot breeze.  Nothing new happened to-day.

“23.—­The day is pleasant.  Six-knot breeze.”

It came to pass that the small, sad boy, wearying of “Uncle Tom” and his “cabin,” was driven to extremes; and, having obtained leave of the captain—­who was autocrat of all his part of the world,—­he climbed into one of the ship’s boats, as it hung in the davits over the side of the vessel.  It was an airy voyage he took there, sailing between sea and sky, soaring up and down with the rolling vessel, like a bird upon the wing.

He rigged a tiny mast there—­it was a walking-stick that ably served this purpose; the captain’s wife provided sails no larger than handkerchiefs.  With thread-like ropes and pencil spars he set his sails for dreamland.  One day the wind bothered him; he could not trim his canvas, and in desperation he set it dead against the wind, and then the sails were filled almost to bursting.  But his navigation was at fault; for he was heading in a direction quite opposite to the Flying Cloud.