There’s an ocean wide we must cross to-day,
For it stretches across the Shining Way.
A board will make us a famous boat;
Hurrah! for the high seas. We’re afloat!
Alice will pilot across the waves,
Jimmy and I are the galley-slaves;
We bend to the broomstick instead of the oar,
And Alice steers for the further shore.
Carefully on our course we keep
Over the trackless and rolling deep.
Under our vessel slowly swim
Minnows, tadpoles and monsters grim.
(Fishes we know, but have never seen,)
And a bull-frog croaks from the rushes green.
The journey near to an end has grown,
When Alice’s rudder strikes a stone.
A lurch—a scramble—a sudden scream,
And over we go in the wet, wet stream.
Alice is dripping, and so am I;
Water has got into Jimmy’s eye;
But land is reached—we are safe, though cold.
And we wonder if Mother may chance to scold?