[Illustration: _Allowed the anchor to hit him_] So saying, he began to pull upon the rope, drawing the boat close up to the shore, when he remarked: "Now, your Royal Highnesses, if you'll step aboard we'll start at once." "Why do you keep on calling us 'Royal Highnesses'?" asked Margaret; for neither she nor Frances had ever heard the title before and they did not know what it meant. "Oh, excuse me!" cried the Admiral, apologetically. "I ought to have guessed it. Your Royal Highnesses prefer to travel incog?" "In what?" asked Margaret. "I thought we were to travel in the boat." "Ha, ha!" laughed the Admiral, clapping his hands. "Very good! Very good! Wasn't that good, Bo'sun?" "A. 1 at Lloyd's," replied the Crew. "We must tell that to the King." The children had not the least idea what the Admiral and the Crew were laughing about, nor what the Crew meant by saying "A. 1 at Lloyd's," but it was evident that Margaret had made a capital joke by accident, and so, trying to look as though they understood quite well, they smiled pleasantly at the two naval men and stepped upon the shelf of rock beside which the boat was lying. Now that it was close up, the children were better able to see what the royal yacht was like. Apparently its frame work was made of the skeleton of a very big fish turned upside down, the fish's backbone forming the keel, and its ribs the ribs of the boat. The whole had been coated over with glass, so that the little girls, standing above it and looking down into the boat, could see right through the bottom of it. They could see the seaweeds on the rocks below and the little fishes flipping about. The bottom of the boat, indeed, being transparent and therefore invisible, stepping into it looked so very much like stepping into the sea that for a moment Margaret and Frances felt some little doubt about venturing. But seeing that the Crew in the stern was leaning out, holding to the rock with both hands, while the Admiral, having first laid aside his cocked hat, was most obligingly lying flat on his gold-laced waistcoat, holding the boat at its other end to steady it, they hesitated no longer, but first removing their sandals for fear their heels might crack the glass, they stepped in, taking their places side by side on the middle seat. "What nice soft cushions!" exclaimed Margaret. "And see! One of them is marked in the corner with an 'F' and the other with an 'M'." "'F' for Frances and 'M' for Margaret," remarked her sister, seating herself on her own cushion and placing her sandals in her lap. "Come on, Periwinkle!" she cried, chirruping encouragingly to the yellow plush puppy. "Come on, then: don't be afraid!" Periwinkle, however was not to be persuaded. Standing on the edge of the rock, looking down into the boat, he, too, could see the fishes passing beneath it, and not knowing that the boat had a glass bottom, he declined to jump into the water--as he supposed.