"I mean that the Tantalizer will be ready for sea in a week, and Father
will go master of her on a Cape Horn voyage. O, if father would only let
me go with him, how delighted I should be! But he says I am too young,
that I am not strong enough; yet I know of boys two or three years
younger than I am, who have been around Cape Horn, and are now making a
second voyage. I have often heard old Captain Wendall tell of the first
voyage father made, when he was but ten years old, and how nimbly he ran
up to the mast-head, and was always the first to discover the whale as
she spouted, and would sing out, 'there she blows!' equal to an old tar.
I must prevail on father to let me go with him."

"Dear, dear Harry, do not talk so! Only think how mother will feel to
have father go! He has been at home so long, ever since I was born, and
how would she feel to have you both go away, and no one but Vingo and
myself to comfort her."

"No one but you to comfort her? You are worth a dozen like me, darling!"
and the little manly fellow threw his arms around her neck, and felt
that he had the very best sister in the world.

"Ah! young massa, I tinks you hab de right sort ob spirit; you's born to
be no land-lubber; but it my 'pinion you had better stay wid good, kind
missus and de Sea-flower a while longer; you not find a better berth,
I'm tinkin'."

"No, that I shall not; let me go where I will, I shall not find a
mother like her; and as for Sea-flower, I don't believe there was ever
another in the whole ocean like her."

"How funny you talk, Harry; you make me think of little Moses in the