Skippy got the first meal aboard the _Minnie M. Baxter_. His heart and soul were certainly not in the task for he burned four of the flapjacks that he was cooking. The coffee had twice boiled over and the narrow little cabin was filled with a blue, acrid smoke and though the sight of his father’s lugubrious face, as he paced up and down outside the little windows, disturbed him, he was not particularly unhappy.