"A good eight inches--ten inches," said Elizabeth. "Quite enough for anybody in the roughest sea." "For a sailor perhaps, but not for young ladies who get giddy and frightened and seasick. Supposing you tumbled off in the dark, and I found you gone when I came to look for you in the morning." "_We_ tumble off!" cried Eleanor. "We never tumbled off anything in our lives. We have lived on the cliffs like the goats and the gulls--nothing makes us giddy. And I don't think anything will make us seasick--or frightened either." "Certainly not frightened," said Patty. He let them have their way--taking a great many (as they thought) perfectly unnecessary precautions in fixing up their quarters in case of a rough sea--and himself carried out their old opossum rug and an armful of pillows to make their nest comfortable. So, in this quiet and breezy bedchamber, roofed over by the moonlit sky, they lay down with much satisfaction in each other's arms, unwatched and unmolested, as they loved to be, save by the faithful Dan Tucker, who found his way to their feet in the course of the night. And the steamer left her moorings and worked out of the bay into the open ocean, puffing and clattering, and danced up and down over the long waves, and they knew nothing about it. In the fresh air, with the familiar voice of the sea around them, they slept soundly under the opossum rug until the sun was high. CHAPTER VI. PAUL. They slept for two nights on the tip of the steamer's nose, and they did not roll off. They had a long, delightful day at sea, no more troubled with seasickness than were the gulls to which they had compared themselves, and full of inquiring interest for each of the ports they touched at, and for all the little novelties of a first voyage. They became great friends with the captain and crew, and with some children who were amongst the passengers (the ladies of the party were indisposed to fraternise with them, not being able to reconcile themselves to the cut and quality of the faded blue gingham gowns, or to those eccentric sleeping arrangements, both of which seemed to point to impecuniosity--which is so closely allied to impropriety, as everybody knows). They sat down to their meals in the little cabin with wonderful appetites; they walked the deck in the fine salt wind with feet that were light and firm, and hearts that were high and hopeful and full of courage and enterprise. Altogether, they felt that the story was beginning pleasantly, and they were eager to turn over the pages. And then, on the brightest of bright summer mornings, they came to Melbourne.