'I see,' said Lucy, and added that she hated geography. 'Drink your cocoa while it's hot,' she said in motherly accents, and 'what book is it?' 'It's _The Last Cruise of the Teal_,' he said. 'Helen gave it me just before she went away. It's a ripping book, and I used it for the roof of the outer court of the Hall of Justice. I remember it perfectly. The chaps on the _Teal_ made torches of paper soaked in paraffin.' 'We haven't any,' said Lucy; 'besides our lamps light everything up all right. Oh! there's Brenda crying again. She hasn't a shadow of pluck.' She went quickly to the cabin where Max was trying to cheer Brenda by remarks full of solid good sense, to which Brenda paid no attention whatever. 'I knew how it would be,' she kept saying in a whining voice; 'I told you so from the beginning. I wish we hadn't come. I want to go home. Oh! what a dreadful thing to happen to dear little dogs.' 'Brenda,' said Lucy firmly, 'if you don't stop whining you shan't have any cocoa.' Brenda stopped at once and wagged her tail appealingly. 'Cocoa?' she said, 'did any one say cocoa? My nerves are so delicate. I know I'm a trial, dear Max, it's no use your pretending I'm not, but there is nothing like cocoa for the nerves. Plenty of sugar, please, dear Lucy. Thank you _so_ much! Yes, it's _just_ as I like it.' 'There will be other things to eat by and by,' said Lucy. 'People who whine won't get any.' 'I'm sure nobody would _dream_ of whining,' said Brenda. 'I know I'm too sensitive; but you can do anything with dear little dogs by kindness. And as for whining--do you know it's a thing I've never been subject to, from a child, never. Max will tell you the same.' Max said nothing, but only fixed his beautiful eyes hopefully on the cocoa jug. And all the time the yacht was speeding along the underground stream, beneath the vast arch of the underground cavern. 'The worst of it is we may be going ever so far away from where we want to get to,' said Philip, when Max had undertaken the steering again. 'All roads,' remarked the parrot, 'lead to Somnolentia. And besides the ship is travelling due north--at least so the ship's compass states, and I have no reason as yet for doubting its word.' 'Hullo!' cried more than one voice, and the ship shot out of the dark cavern into a sheet of water that lay spread under a white dome. The stream that had brought them there seemed to run across one side of this pool. Max, directed by the parrot, steered the ship into smooth water, where she lay at rest at last in the very middle of this great underground lake. '_This_ isn't out of _The Cruise of the Teal_,' said Philip. 'They must have shut that book.'