"All aboard!" shouted Johnnie. "All but Thomas Barber, who's goin' t' be left behind 'cause he was so mean!" What a blow! The longshoreman, plainly crushed by it, sank lower on his step and covered his face. But the company cared little how he felt. Shouting gayly, chatting, smiling, waving to one another, all swarmed across the rose-bordered rail to embark at Johnnie's bidding. Last of all stalked the haughty Buckle--to begin passing melon. "Ready! Let 'er go!" Now a soul-inspiring blending of choir and instruments--just as Johnnie gave his command, and the ship of his dreams moved off across the roofs of the city, with no rolling from side to side. Skillfully she steered her own way among the chimneys till she was lifted above them, all the while tossing the blue air to either side of her prow exactly as if it were water, so that it rose up in cloud-topped waves, and curled, and broke along her rose-trimmed sides in crystal, from where it fell to lay behind her in a long, tumbled, frothy path. "Oh, Cis, we're sailin' the sky!" Johnnie shouted. His yellow hair was blowing straight back from his eager, happy face as he peered forward (as a good captain should) into the limitless, but astronomer-charted, leagues ahead. "We're floatin' in the ocean o' space!" Here, close at hand, was a cloud, monster, dazzlingly white, and made all of dew which was heavenly cool. Gallantly the _Hispaniola_ plunged into it, sending the bits of cloud from her in a milky spray, but catching some of them upon her sides and sails, so that as she came forth into the sun again, she seemed set with all of Aladdin's diamonds! "On, and on, and on, and on!" Johnnie commanded. (He had no time even for a slice of watermelon!) Oh, how wonderful to think that there was no shore ahead upon which Jim Hawkins's ship would need to beach! that Johnnie and his friends could go on sailing and sailing for as long as they chose! "Look out for the Great Bear and the Bull!"--another command for the _Hispaniola_, for now that the ship was higher, she was passing among the stars, all as perfectly round as so many toy balloons, all marvelously luminous, and each most accommodatingly marked across its round, golden face (in great, black, capital letters!) with its name--MARS, JUPITER, SATURN, VENUS. It seemed to Johnnie as if he were meeting old friends. "Oh, Arcturus!" he hailed. "Aldebaran! Neptune!" "Johnnie, don't bump the Moon!" cried the Prince and his gentlemen, waving their canes. "Y' betcher life I won't!" Any large body, the good ship most considerately avoided. As for the small ones, which had no names on them, if she struck one, it glanced off of her like a red-gold spark. "Aw, gee!" cried Johnnie, easing his tortured little body by a shift of his weight across the table edge; "this is jus' fine!" CHAPTER XXXII HELP KNOCK! knock! knock! knock!