“You don’t mind taking a spin for a way in the good ship _Viking_, do you?” asked Harvey. “I have hardly seen you since we got this yacht, you know, as my folks moved up to Boston the last of the summer.” “We will go along a little way till we strike the worst of the chop,” replied Tom Harris. “Our canoe will not tow safely through that. That is, we will, if you allow Indians aboard.” “Yes, and by the way, before anybody else has the chance to apply,” said Bob White, “you don’t want to hire a couple of foremast hands, do you, off and on during the summer? I’d be proud to swab the decks of this boat, and wages of no account.” “We’ll engage both of you at eighteen sculpins a week,” answered Henry Burns. “But of course you know that the laws against flogging seamen don’t go, aboard here. Harvey there, he is my first mate; and I make it a rule to beat him with a belaying-pin three or four times a day, regular, to keep him up to his work. Of course you forecastle chaps will get it worse.” Harvey, surveying his more slender companion, saluted with great deference. “How do you fellows happen to be up here?” he asked. “Haven’t you gone to camping yet?” “Yes,” replied Bob. “The old tent is down there on the point. We have had it set up for three days. We had an errand that brought us up here.” “And the Warren boys?” inquired Henry Burns. “Oh, they are down there in the cottage, sort of camping out, too; that is, the family hasn’t arrived yet. George and Arthur are working like slaves trying to keep young Joe fed.” “_He’s_ a whole famine in himself,” remarked Henry Burns. “Say, how is old Mrs. Newcome’s cat, Henry, the one you saved from the fire?” asked Tom Harris. “Why, the cat hasn’t written me lately,” answered Henry Burns. “But I got a letter from Mrs. Newcome a few weeks ago; said she hoped we would have a good summer in the yacht, lots of fun, and all that.” “My! but you are lucky,” exclaimed Bob. “I have been as polite as mice to every cat I’ve seen all winter, but I haven’t received any presents for it.” Renewing old acquaintanceships in this manner, they were shortly in rougher water. “Here!” cried Tom Harris at length, “we must be getting out of this. That canoe will not stand towing in this chop much longer. We shall have to leave you.” “Pull it in aboard,” said Jack Harvey. “No, it would be in the way,” replied Tom Harris. “Just as much obliged to you. We’ll meet you at the camp. Say that you will come ashore and eat supper with us, and Bob will have one of those fine chowders waiting for you; won’t you, Bob?” “Ay, ay, sir,” replied Bob. “You mean that you will cook one while we sit by and watch you, don’t you?” asked Harvey. “We shall get there before you do.”