When the first of the cargo went aboard, the vessel sat high out of the water, but when all should be in and stowed safely away, she would settle deep down to her "water line." This was where the green and black paint met. All this had been planned before she was built, Captain Hawes explained; the ship designer knew just how she should sit in the water when loaded; there was no guesswork about it.
The ship was to go on an Eastern voyage. He had often been out there, away off in the China seas, where strange craft came about you: junks with their odd, high sails, their yellow sailors with "pigtails" down their backs, everything so different from our part of the world.
[a]BURNED AT SEA]
In the evenings, as Captain Hawes sat smoking his pipe, he would tell the children of strange lands he had visited in his voyages, and then suggest that they look up these places in their geographies, and this study, which before was a task, took on a new interest for Bob and Betty. China and Greenland now meant so much more.