"I wonder," remarked the Cook, as he dropped his knife for a moment, and caressed the blistered palms of his hands, "why all you fellows insist on having decks. I don't wonder that you two Chrysalids," referring to the Vice and the Purser, whose boats were of that famous model, "I don't wonder that you two Chrysalids do it, for the builder of your boats stupidly decked them before you bought them, but the Commodore, who, like me, was sensible enough to buy a Red Lake boat, wasn't satisfied to leave it free and open as he found it, but has gone and stretched rubber-cloth over it fore and aft. It's as bad as sailing in a coffin, to sail in any of them." [Illustration: The Cook selects a Boom. (Below is the one that was lost.)] "I'd as lieve sail in a coffin as in a bath-tub," replied the Vice, who, having commanded a blockade-runner during the late unpleasantness, had a natural fondness for tight decks and plenty of them. "A well-covered bath-tub," remarked the Commodore, "is fully as seaworthy as a mahogany-topped coffin, and far less suggestive of canoeing on the Styx. But for a cover of some sort, I confess an affection. It keeps things dry; if a man capsizes--" "A canoeist has no business to capsize," interrupted the Cook, who had learned canoeing on a Western river, and in a "dug out," which could only be turned over by the united efforts of at least two men, "and a canoeist has no right to have 'things' lying so loosely as to drop out." At length the squadron set sail. The wind had freshened, and the white caps were as numerous and agitated as in a large female seminary during a night alarm of fire. The Commodore, the Vice and the Purser were all experienced sailors, so they shortened sail, but the Cook, having never handled a boat under sail before, possessed his soul of the nautical bliss that comes of ignorance. Shorten sail? He would show those fellows what a fearless sailor and a good boat could do, when the wind was disposed to aid them. The Cook experimented nervously for a few moments to learn where the sail should really be to catch the most wind, but when he learned he made full use of his knowledge, and his boat, the Cherub, seemed literally to fly. It passed the Becky Sharp, (the flagship) so rapidly that the Cook had not time to study the Commodore's face long enough to know how that official liked it; it passed the Rochefort, causing the Vice to scowl as if the unoffending Cherub were a member of the party which the whilom statesman hated; it threw for an instant the shadow of its great white mainsail on the Arethusela, darkening the blonde complexion and golden locks of the Artist-Purser.