(_Tom_) “We have left our happy home, On the ocean for to roam.” (_Sailors_) “Yeo, ho! Away we go! Round the world and back again.— Yeo—heave-_ho_!” (_Tom_) “And our wives and sweethearts dear, May not see for more’n a year.” (_Sailors_) “Fair winds! White sails flowing free, Blue water ’neath our keel,— That’s the life for _me_!” [Illustration: TOM GREEN’S CHANTY TOM. We have left our hap-py home, On the o-cean for to roam. REFRAIN. SAILORS. Yeo-ho! A-way we go! Round the world and back a-gain, Yeo, heave ho! TOM. And our wives and sweet-hearts dear May not see for more’n a year. SAILORS. Fair winds, white sails flow-ing free, Blue wa-ter ’neath our keel, That’s the life for me! ] The Princess laughed with her eyes at the Others, while she held the last long note until it seemed to die away in the woods, and they laughed back, but they didn’t speak, and she went on, quite seriously:— “I give you only one verse of it, but there were ninety-three, and it told all about their life on the ocean wave and what they wanted to do, and Tom Green made most of it up as he went along,—so perhaps he worked as hard as any of them! “Now, every time when they sung the refrain, the sailors all pulled together on the ropes, and little by little—inch by inch, almost—the great long mainmast rose in the air. And on all the other ships the sailors stood watching, because they had nothing else to do, and they all joined in the chanty, and the sound of it mounted up through the clouds. There never was a chanty like it since the world began! “It had been bright, sunshiny weather when the work began, but all the afternoon the clouds had gathered until the sky was completely overcast, like a solid roof of gray, and when the mast rose up, about one quarter of it pierced the clouds. At last it stood, straight and tall, the heel firmly fixed on the step above the deck of the Jane Ellen, and the top hidden from sight in the cloud roof, and a shout went up that must have reached the heavens! Then everybody drew a long breath, and went to rest, and waited for it to be quite dark.” The Princess paused. “Perhaps you, yourselves, would like to stop and hear the rest another time?” she suggested. But they were sure they wouldn’t. So, after only a moment, while Pat changed to another place, she went on:— “When it was time, and every one was on deck (the other captains had come aboard again), the Captain of the Jane Ellen looked up at the great tall mast, going up and up until it went out of sight in the clouds, and he said to the other captains, ‘Whom shall I send up to talk to the Star People?’ And the other captains said, very decidedly, ‘You’ll have to send an able seaman.’