Chapter 1. The Start
_ CHAPTER ONE. THE START
We had come home from school much earlier than usual, on account of illness having broken out there； but as none of the boys were dangerously ill, and those in the infirmary were very comfortable, we were not excessively unhappy. I suspect that some of us wished that fever or some other sickness would appear two or three weeks before all the holidays.
However, as we had nothing to complain of at school, this, I confess, was a very unreasonable wish.
The very day of our arrival home, when we were seated at dinner, and my brother Oliver and I were discussing the important subject of how we were to spend the next ten or twelve weeks, we heard our papa, who is a retired captain of the Royal Navy--and who was not attending to what we were talking about--say, as he looked across the table to mamma:
"Would you object to these boys of ours taking a cruise with me round England this summer?"
We pricked up our ears, you may be sure,

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