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The Moral Pirates.
147

"The Whitewing is an awfully nice boat," Tom continued, "but she is too small. We ought to have a boat that we can sleep in comfortably, and without getting wet every night."

"But, then," Harry suggested, "you couldn't drag a bigger boat round a dam."

"We can't drag the Whitewing round much of a dam. She's too big to be handled on land, and too little to be comfortable. Now, here's my plan."

"Let's have it," cried the other boys.

"We can hire a cat-boat about twenty feet long, and she'll be big enough, so that we can rig up a canvas cabin at night. We can anchor her, and sleep on board her every night. We can carry mattresses, so we needn't sleep on stones and stumps—"

—"And coffee-pots," interrupted Joe.

—"And we can take lots of things, and live comfortably. We can sail instead of rowing; and though I like to row as well as the next fellow, we've had a little too much of that. Now we'll get a cat-boat next summer, and we'll cruise from New