Our crew is composed of three brothers:
Sam Dobbs, Dick Dobbs, and Bob Dobbs;
all active seamen, and as worthy and hearty
fellows as any man in the world could wish
to sail with. My friend's name is Mr. Migott,
and mine is Mr. Jollins. Thus, we are five
on board altogether. As for our characters,
I shall leave them to come out as they may
in the course of this narrative. I am going
to tell things just as they happened. What
some people call smart writing, comic colouring,
and graphic describing, are departments
of authorship at which I snap my fingers in
contempt.

The port we sailed from was a famous
watering-place on the western coast, called
Mangerton-on-the-Mud; and our intention, as
intimated in the letter of our prudent friend,
was to go even further than the Land's End, and
to reach those last bits of English ground called
the Scilly Islands. But if the reader thinks he
is now to get afloat at once, he is grievously
mistaken. One very important and interesting
part of our voyage was entirely comprised
in the preparations that we made for it. To
this portion of the subject, therefore, I shall
wholly devote myself in the first instance.
On paper, or off it, neither Mr. Migott nor
myself are men to be hurried.

We left London with nothing but our
clothes, our wrappers, some tobacco, some
French novels, and some Egyptian cigars.
Everything that was to be bought for the
voyage was to be procured at Bristol. Everything
that could be extracted from private
benevolence was to be taken in unlimited
quantities from hospitable friends living
more or less in the neighbourhood of our
place of embarkation.  At Bristol we plunged
over head and ears in naval business immediately.
After ordering a ham, and a tongue,
marmalade, lemons, anchovy paste, and
general groceries, we set forth to the quay to
equip ourselves and our vessel.  We began
with charts, sailing directions, and a compass;
we got on to a hammock a-piece and a flag;
and we rose to a nautical climax by buying
tarpaulin-coats, leggings, and sou'-westers, at
a sailors' public-house.  With these sea-
stores, and with a noble loaf of home-made
bread (the offering of private benevolence)
we left Bristol to scour the friendly country
beyond, in search of further contributions to
the larder of the Tomtit.

The first scene of our ravages was a large
country-house, surrounded by the most charming
grounds.  From the moment when we
and our multifarious packages poured tumultuous
into the hall, to the moment when we
and the said packages poured out of it again
into a carriage and a cart, I have no
recollection, excepting meal-times and bedtime, of
having been still for an instant.  Escorted
everywhere by two handsome, high-spirited
boys, in a wild state of excitement about our
voyage, we ranged the house from top to
bottom, and laid hands on everything portable
and eatable that we wanted in it. The
inexhaustible hospitality of our hostess was
proof against all the inroads that we could
make on it. The priceless gift of packing
perishable commodities securely in small
spaces possessed by a lady living in the house
and placed perpetually at our disposal,
encouraged our propensities for unlimited
accumulation. We ravaged the kitchen
garden and the fruit-garden; we rushed
into the awful presence of the cook (with our
ham and tongue from Bristol as an excuse)
and ranged predatory over the lower regions.
We scaled back-staircases, and tramped along
remote corridors, and burst into secluded
lumber-rooms, with accompaniment of shouting
from the boys, and of operatic humming
from Mr. Migott and myself, who happen,
among other social accomplishments, to be
both of us musical in a free-and-easy way.
We turned out, in these same lumber-rooms,
plans of estates from their neat tin cases, and
put in lemons and loaf-sugar instead. Mr.
Migott pounced upon a stray telescope, and
strapped it over my shoulders forthwith.
The two boys found two japanned boxes,
with the epaulettes and shako of an ex-
military member of the family inside, which
articles of martial equipment (though these
are war-times, and nothing is meritorious or
respectable now but fighting) I, with my own
irreverent hands, shook out on the floor;
and straightway conveyed the empty cases
down-stairs to be profaned by tea, sugar,
Harvey's sauce, pickles, pepper, and other
products of the art of peace. In a word,
and not to dwell too long on the purely
piratical part of our preparations for the
voyage, we doubled the number of our
packages at this hospitable country-house,
before we left it for Mangerton-on-the-
Mud, and the dangers of the sea that lay
beyond.

At Mangerton we made a second piratical
swoop upon another long-suffering friend, the
resident doctor. We let this gentleman off,
however, very easily, only lightening him of
a lanthorn, and two milk-cans to hold our
fresh-water. We felt strongly inclined to
take his warmest cape away from him also;
but Mr. Migott leaned towards the side of
mercy, and Mr. Jollins was, as usual, only too
ready to sacrifice himself on the altar of
friendship,—so the doctor kept his cape, after
all. Not so fortunate was our next victim,
Mr. Purler, the Port Admiral of Mangerton-
on-the-Mud, and the convivial host of the
Metropolitan Inn. Wisely entering his
house empty-handed, we left it with sheets,
blankets, mattresses, pillows, table-cloths,
napkins, knives, forks, spoons, crockery, a
frying-pan, a gridiron, and a saucepan.
When to these articles of domestic use were
added the parcels we had brought from
Bristol, the packages we had collected at the
country-house, the doctor's milk-cans, the
personal baggage of the two enterprising