"No," said Archie. "We might as well give that up. And since I have come to think of it, I don't want them to go unless they are perfectly willing to do so."
"Nor I," said Eugene. "If it frightens them so badly to travel on a railroad train, what would be their feelings when they found the schooner tossing about on such waves as we saw coming around the Horn? I shall urge them no more."
"They have been talking to Frank about it," continued Fred. "They always go to him and believe every word he says—that is, almost every word."
"Ah! yes; I was going to put that in," said Archie. "They don't like to believe that the world is round. They don't say so with their mouths, but they do with their eyes."
"And they don't know what to think about elephants as large as that house of Potter's, and lions and tigers, and snakes twenty feet long," said Fred.
"And a whale bothers them," chimed in Eugene; "and Dick laughed the other day when I told him about a flying-fish."
"What's going on down there?" asked Archie, as the sound of voices in animated conversation came up from the deck.
The boys looked below and saw that the group, which they had last seen scattered over the quarter-deck, were gathered about Dick Lewis, who appeared to be making them a speech. Now and then he illustrated his remarks by pointing to something he had placed at his feet; but the boys could not see what it was, for the Club were crowded about it and hid it from view. They were missing something, that was evident; but they did not intend to miss any more of it, and it was but the work of a few seconds to swing themselves out of the crosstrees on to the ratlines, and descend to the deck. They ran up to the group, and found that the object over which the trapper was holding forth was simply a mess-pan filled with water.
"Them stories you've been a tellin' seems wonderful to me an' ole Bob, who never heard the like afore," Dick was saying as the boys came up. "We don't conspute 'em, 'cause bein' unedicated men, we never had no book larnin', an' don't know nothing outside the mountains an' the prairy. Now, you tell me that thar's three times as much water on the 'arth as thar is ground; that you're goin' to start from Fr'isco an' sail clean around it in this yere little boat, an' that if me an' ole Bob'll go with you, we won't even know that we're sailing round the world. Won't we know when we come to the edge?"