The sailors seemed always full of fun, even in the worst of times. During some fearful storms she was safely housed in the cabin, and it amused her to see the things pitch and roll as far as their chains would allow them. Sometimes, too, they had to hold the food in their hands, but she never knew the danger of the worst storms. Rachel would not admit that she was afraid, and the captain said, "Yes, we're having a stiff blow, but the _Flying Star_ has weathered many a gale before." And here it was so very quiet. It looked dreary outside, with the leafless trees. She liked the toss and tumult of the waves with their snowy, jewelled crests, and the clouds scudding along the sky, which she imagined was another sea full of ships. Often they went in port and there was nothing left but the blue sky above--a great hollow vault. And when the sun shone the real sea and ocean was in flames of such splendid colors. There was no end of curious people at ports where they stopped for supplies, there was always something strange, even when they were days alone on the water. For the sunset and sunrise were never twice alike. Then the moon from its tiny crescent to the great round globe that illumined the world with her fairy richness and scattered jewels on every crested wave. She had watched it turn the other way and grow smaller and smaller until you saw it vaguely in the morning. She was so interested in the stories they told about it, the signs and wonders they ascribed to it. "And was it ever a real world like that we have left behind?" she asked of the captain. "Were there people in it? And land, and rivers, and growing things, and flowers?" and her wondering eyes grew larger. "No one can tell now. Some astronomers believe it a burned-out world and the things we take for a man," laughing, "and the cow ready to jump off, are remnants of roads, and forests, and mountains." "You _can_ see the man in the moon," she returned decisively. "Sometimes he laughs. And the cow has great horns. I should be afraid of them if I met such a cow. Ours are so small and tame." "You will see large ones in Salem. But I think, for the most part, they are gentle." She never wearied talking over the strange things. And so she came to have her head filled with wonderful lore that indeed cropped out now and then all her life long until she felt as if she had really been in fairyland.