start upon another voyage. Polynesia had told me that he hardly
ever stayed at home for more than six months at a stretch.
Therefore he would be surely going again within a fortnight. And
I--I, Tommy Stubbins, would go with him! Just to think of it!--
to cross the Sea, to walk on foreign shores, to roam the World!



PART TWO

THE FIRST CHAPTER

THE CREW OF "THE CURLEW"

FROM that time on of course my position in the town was very
different. I was no longer a poor cobbler's son. I carried my
nose in the air as I went down the High Street with Jip in his
gold collar at my side; and snobbish little boys who had despised
me before because I was not rich enough to go to school now
pointed me out to their friends and whispered, "You see him? He's
a doctor's assistant--and only ten years old!"

But their eyes would have opened still wider with wonder if they
had but known that I and the dog that was with me could talk to
one another.

Two days after the Doctor had been to our house to dinner he told
me very sadly that he was afraid that he would have to give up
trying to learn the language of the shellfish--at all events for
the present.