notes to be sent to the homes of the clerical crew,
he ordered Mr. Burdette to secure a pilot, attend to the clearance
business, and make everything ready to cast off and get out of the
harbor as soon as possible.

When the five reverend gentlemen who had decided not to accompany the
_Summer Shelter_ in her further voyaging had departed for the hotel,
portmanteaus in hand, and amply furnished by Mrs. Cliff with funds for
their return to their homes, the volunteer crew, most of them without
coats or waistcoats, and all in a high picnic spirit, set to work with
enthusiasm, doing more things than they knew how to do, and embarrassing
Mr. Burdette a good deal by their over-willingness to make themselves
useful. But this untrained alacrity was soon toned down, and early in
the afternoon, the hawsers of the _Summer Shelter_ were cast off, and
she steamed out of the eastern passage of the harbor.

There were remarks made in the town after the departure of the yacht;
but when the passengers who had been left behind, all clergymen of high
repute, had related the facts of the case, and had made it understood
that the yacht, whose filibustering purpose had been suspected by its
former crew, was now manned by nine members of the Synod recently
convened in Brooklyn, and under the personal direction of Mrs. Cliff, an
elderly and charitable resident of Plainton, Maine, all distrust was
dropped, and was succeeded in some instances by the hope that the yacht
might not be wrecked before it reached Jamaica.

The pilot left the _Summer Shelter_; three of the clergymen shovelled
coal; four of them served as deck hands; and two others ran around as
assistant cooks and stewards; Mr. Portman and Mr. Burdette lent their
hands to things which were not at all in their line of duty; Mrs. Cliff
and Willy pared the vegetables, and cooked without ever thinking of
stopping to fan themselves; while Captain Burke flew around like
half-a-dozen men, with a good word for everybody, and a hand to help
wherever needed. It was truly a jolly voyage from Nassau to Kingston.

The new crew was divided into messes, and Mrs. Cliff insisted that they
should come to the table in the saloon, no matter how they looked or
what they had been doing: on her vessel a coal-heaver off duty was as
good as a Captain,--while the clergymen good-humoredly endeavored to
preserve the relative lowliness of their positions, each actuated by a
zealous desire to show what a good deck