“Why, when I was a little boy, you know,” explained the Skipper, “I used to skip all the dry parts of a book—and the pages and pages I used to skip of my ancient history you’d never believe. It was that which decided my parents upon making me a Skipper. ”He’ll never do for anything else,” they used to say?”
“Well, are you going aboard or not?” he added, “because, if so, we ought to be starting.”
“Oh, yes, let’s go,” pleaded Marjorie, “we might just as well be on board as at this place, you know, and we shall, at any rate, be going somewhere, and perhaps we shall find some one who knows the way to England on the sea.”
So the children and the Dodo went aboard, and the Skipper blew a little whistle, which he wore tied around his neck by a white cord, and the sailors all came running up, bringing their spinning wheels, which they packed away at the bow of the vessel, and then settled themselves down at the oars. At the other end was a cosy little cabin, and above it a small deck, upon which the little passengers made themselves quite comfortable, and the Captain ordered the scales to be brought up from below.
“What are they for?” asked Dick, who, boy-like, always wanted to know the reason for everything.
“To weigh the anchor with,” explained the Skipper, seriously. “We always have to weigh it when we start on a voyage, and again when we reach our journey’s end.”
“What for?” asked Dick, who certainly remembered having heard the expression “weighing the anchor” before.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure,” said the Skipper; “pack of nonsense, I calls it; but it’s the custom, and it’s got to be done.”
So the anchor was duly weighed, and the exact weight put down in a book, and the Argosy, as the ship was called, slowly moved out of the harbor.
It was a beautiful day, but there was just a little breeze blowing, and the sea was a little “choppy” outside, and, as a consequence, the Argosy rolled a little.