Rose was a little mystified, but she looked vexed at the same time, as if she distrusted all was not right.

“I remember all my sea education,” continued the unsuspecting widow, “as if it had been learnt yesterday.  Beating the wind and attacking ship, my poor Mr. Budd used to say, were nice manoeuvres, and required most of his tactics, especially in heavy weather.  Did you know, Rosy dear, that sailors weigh the weather, and know when it is heavy and when it is light?”

“I did not, aunt; nor do I understand now how it can very well be done.”

“Oh! child, before you have been at sea a week, you will learn so many things that are new, and get so many ideas of which you never had any notion before, that you’ll not be the same person.  My captain had an instrument he called a thermometer, and with that he used to weigh the weather, and then he would write down in the log-book `today, heavy weather, or to-morrow, light weather,’ just as it happened, and that helped him mightily along in his voyages.”

“Mrs. Budd has merely mistaken the name of the instrument—­the `barometer’ is what she wished to say,” put in Mulford, opportunely.

Rose looked grateful, as well as relieved.  Though profoundly ignorant on these subjects herself, she had always suspected her aunt’s knowledge.  It was, consequently, grateful to her to ascertain that, in this instance, the old lady’s mistake had been so trifling.

“Well, it may have been the barometer, for I know he had them both,” resumed the aunt.  “Barometer, or thermometer, it do n’t make any great difference; or quadrant, or sextant.  They are all instruments, and sometimes he used one, and sometimes another.  Sailors take on board the sun, too, and have an instrument for that, as well as one to weigh the weather with.  Sometimes they take on board the stars, and the moon, and `fill their ships with the heavenly bodies,’ as I’ve heard my dear husband say, again and again!  But the most curious thing at sea, as all sailors tell me, is crossing the line, and I do hope we shall cross the line, Rosy, that you and I may see it.”

“What is the line, aunty, and how do vessels cross it.”

“The line, my dear, is a place in the ocean where the earth is divided into two parts, one part being called the North Pole, and the other part the South Pole.  Neptune lives near this line, and he allows no vessel to go out of one pole into the other, without paying it a visit.  Never! never!—­he would as soon think of living on dry land as think of letting even a canoe pass, without visiting it.”

“Do you suppose there is such a being, really, as Neptune, aunty?”

“To be sure I do; he is king of the sea.  Why should n’t there be?  The sea must have a king, as well as the land.”

“The sea may be a republic, aunty, like this country; then, no king is necessary.  I have always supposed Neptune to be an imaginary being.”