"There isn't any earth. It's all water," said Fanny.
"Well, when we do get on earth, what are we to do for meat and milk and wool—and—and—"
"Oh, it's all up, and we might as well stop being Noah and his wife," said Jem to me, impatiently. "What's an ark without the animals? And there isn't room for a mouse."
"Oh, Jem, you and the girls get on the chest," said the fertile Ned, "and we'll be pirates, and swoop down on you."
"I don't want to be swooped down upon," said Jem, unreconciled.
"Oh, it's fun. Come on, Phil!" And upon that we were tumbled out, and Ned and Phil leaped into the cr—cruiser with such a piratical mien, and turned so fiercely upon us, that we were glad—Fanny and Jessie and I—to clamber up on the old chest for refuge. Then the cruiser, with a black neck-tie flying from a cane mast, bore down upon us so hotly that Jem was forced to come to our defense, and manfully he fought, too. Poor Jessie shrank into a little heap, and screamed. Fanny, her eyes flashing, and her tumbled, shining hair full of dried thoroughwort leaves from a great bunch hanging close above her, was struggling desperately with Ned, who, instead of carrying her off in his arms, as a true pirate should do, was pulling her aboard his cruiser by one foot, while with a crutch that used to be our grandfather's I was pushing her off—not Fanny, but the cruiser, I mean—into deep water. I was succeeding finely, when Phil kicked the foot of the crutch aside as I was throwing my whole weight upon the top, and in a trice I had rolled into the hold of the pirate ship.
This was too much for Jamie, who seized the mast of the cruiser, with a cry of "Down with the black flag!" and dealt Phil a blow upon the back that added another voice to the general chorus of shrieks.
In the midst of the uproar we heard a soft voice from the extreme end of the attic, calling,
"Children! children!"
One by one we ceased our outcries, and listened.