On the last day of the month the squadron sailed for Åbo, in Finland. During the week the vessels had remained among the islands; they had been working gradually to the eastward, till it was only a short run to this port. The town is on the Aurajoki River, about three miles from the Gulf of Bothnia. The squadron came to anchor off the mouth of the river, near the village of Boxholm. The steamers and small vessels go up to the town, but large craft are obliged to discharge their cargoes at this place. On a hill which commands the entrance to the river there is a fort, which is also a prison--an ancient structure with the ruins of a watch-tower, which has stood for centuries. Many of the houses on the shore were painted red,--as in the country towns of New England fifty years ago,--and were occupied by fishermen and laborers. The students, who had been in the solitudes of nature for a week, and had hardly seen a living creature, or anything connected with civilized life, were interested in observing every indication of civilization in the vicinity. For the time, even the exciting topic of the change in the "tenure of office" was dropped. Scott, who had been quietly at work ever since the meeting at the picnic, suspended his labors, and made queer comments upon the old castle, the boats, and the people around the ship. Though there was actually a village in sight, it did not entirely remove the impression from the minds of many of the students that they were almost "out of the world," for the oppressive fact that they were in sixty and a half degrees of north latitude was not entirely removed by the fort, the village, and the people. "All hands, attend lecture!" shouted the boatswain, as his shrill pipe rang through the ship, and was repeated in the two consorts. "Lecture!" exclaimed Scott. "That's too bad! What does the professor think we are made of? We have been patient and long-suffering in the matter of lectures, and I didn't suppose we were to be dosed with any more till we got to Russia." "We are in Russia now," replied Laybold. "Not much, if my soundings are correct. Finland isn't Russia, any more than the Dominion of Canada is Great Britain. It is subject to Russia, but the people here make their own laws, or at least have a finger in the pie, which they don't under the nose of the Czar. Do you see that big fish, Laybold?" "What fish?" asked the other. "Why, that one near the shore. He is over five feet long." Scott pointed at a man who had just taken a small boy on his back, and was wading out to a boat, with a man on each side of him. "I don't see any fish," added Laybold, straining his eyes as he gazed earnestly in the direction indicated by his companion. "Don't you? Then you are a little blind in one of your ears. There he goes towards the boat." "What is it?" asked several others. "A big fish," replied Scott, demurely. "I see some men, but no fish," said Laybold. "There, he has stopped by the boat."