[THE “MOBY DICK”]
She sailed down Gara Valley,
She startled all the cows;
With touchwood in her galley,
And green paint round her bows.
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.