"And therefore it suits our vessel," I said, "for you know, Billy, ships are always given ladies' names." "Yes, and the _Lovey Susan_," says he, "she went to the bottom, and _her_ name was soft enough, and I don't believe any boat with the name _Esperanza_ would ever have the strength to ride through a storm. I likes a plain straightforward name, I do, like my own; you won't find any man," says he, "with a better name than Billy Bobbin." "Well, shall we call her Billy?" I asked. Billy looked very serious at this, and after considering for a minute he said he wasn't going to be called a "her" or a "she" for anybody, not even on a boat, and then added, "Call her plain _Hope_ and settle it, master, and never mind about your _Esperanzas_." "Fair Hope would suit a lady better than Plain Hope," I said very gravely, and Billy, who was quite unconscious of the verbal point ('twas a very small one, I own), agreed that _Fair Hope_ wasn't bad; and so we got some powdered charcoal and mixed it with oil, and printed the name in black letters on the larboard bow, as Billy called it, and having done this, we thought we might now venture to make a short expedition up the coast. [Sidenote: We go Sailing] It was a fair bright morning when we set out on this our first voyage, and we were very much excited, as you may imagine. We had been by my reckoning, which was pure guess-work, above two years on the island, and though we had become pretty reconciled to it, regarding it indeed as our home for the rest of our lives, there were times when our lot seemed to be that of prisoners, and the prospect of getting beyond our bounds, though ever so short a distance and for ever so short a time, seemed like the loosening of fetters and the removing of prison bars. This made me think what a blessed thing is liberty, and when I remembered unfortunate people whom I had read about as falling into captivity I compared our lot with theirs, and saw how much we had to be thankful for. However, to return to our voyage. We had been taught a certain caution by sundry incidents that had already happened in our life on the island, so we put some food and two or three pots of fresh water in the bottom of the vessel, and our spears, axes, and bows and arrows as well. While Billy carried these things down to the vessel, I went up to our watch-tower, to see whether any canoes were in sight, for we should have been very sorry if we had run among a fleet of savage vessels. However, there was not a speck to be seen, only the low dusky line on the western horizon that we believed to be the coast of some island. Accordingly we set off in perfect ease of mind, and paddled slowly along, keeping close to the shore, and following its indentations as well as the rocks and shoals would permit us.