The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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Golden Gate at dawn on the 28th of June.

Besides the family and a servant, Valentine Roch, who had been with them
since Bournemouth days, the party consisted of the skipper, Captain
Otis, who was well acquainted with the Pacific, a crew of four
deck-hands, and a Japanese cook.

The _Casco_ was a fore-and-aft schooner, ninety-five feet in length, of
seventy tons' burden. "She had most graceful lines and with her lofty
masts, white sails and decks, and glittering brass work, was a lovely
craft to the eye as she sat upon the water."

"I must try to describe the vessel that is to be our home for so long,"
Mrs. Stevenson, senior, wrote to her sister at Colinton. "From the deck
you step down into the cockpit, which is our open air drawing room. It
has seats all around, nicely cushioned, and we sit or lie there most of
the day. The compass is there, and the wheel, so the man at the wheel