The “Moby Dick” was supposed to be a Mississippi River steamboat; she was built out of a flat piece of board almost fourteen inches long and six inches broad; on top of that she had a cardboard box with cabin windows drawn on it, and she had cardboard paddle-boxes with her name painted on them with ink; she also had an eagle painted on her deck-house. Inside her deck-house there was a cocoa tin with a[Pg 14] cardboard funnel coming out of the top of it. The tin was there so that we could make a fire in it of paper and touchwood. At first, when we made our fire, it would not burn because there was no draught, so we made a large hole in front of the deck-house and another one abaft, also holes in the side of the cocoa tin; that made a draught, and then you should have seen the smoke coming out of her funnel!

THE FIRST VOYAGE OF THE “MOBY DICK”

She started from No Name Straits, but she had to put back again because her fire was not burning, so we stirred it up a bit and put in some more dry touchwood, then it smoked fine, and we let her go.

She was going the Round Channel when her Mate sung out to the Captain:

“She’ll go through the Two Snags!”

“She’ll never do it!” shouted the Captain.

“Let’s try her!” yelled the Mate.

“Go ahead!” roared the Captain, and the Mate shoved the helm hard[Pg 15] up, and she slid through without touching anywhere.

After she had passed through she bore away towards the easterly shore, and went easily along with the Bully Bowline current; but as she was not smoking properly, her Captain gave orders to beach her on Treasure Beach (we called it that name because it looked just the sort of beach pirates would choose to bury treasure in). When she came ashore we stirred up her furnace until it burnt magnificently, then we shoved her off[Pg 16] again, and she looked really great as her smoke and herself were both reflected in the water as clear as anything. She then continued her voyage over the Marbley Shallows on to Safety Cove.

The “Moby Dick” did so well that run that we thought we would send her down the river again at once, and we did send her down, and no mistake, because we put an anchor on her stern, with lots of cable, and just when she was going through No Name Straits she let go her anchor, because we wanted to see how she would look when it brought her up all standing.

Well, she dragged her anchor for a few yards until it caught in a weed, and what did she do but get pulled right down to the bottom of the river, the stream was too strong for her.