Terms and dates and the like shall be imaginary, and so let the vessel be a schooner of one hundred tons called the 'Evangeline,' and her owner Mr.Robinson, and me, who was captain of her, Jacob Williams.

This'll furnish a creep you may go on sweeping with till Doomsday without raising what's dead and gone, though not forgotten, mind ye, from the bottom.

Well, for a whole fortnight had the 'Evangeline' been moored in a snug berth alongside a pier wall.

The English Channel was wide there, and it didn't need much sailing to find the Atlantic Ocean.

I began to think all cruising was to come to an end; for Mr.Robinson was a man fond of keeping the sea, and I had never found a fortnight's lying by to his taste at all.