anged his tune.

"Look here!" said he to me, pulling me on one side; "wont that pilot
want to be paid something? He wont stop his vessel and take us back for
nothing, will he?"

I couldn't say anything about this, but I asked the purser, who still
stood by us.

"I don't suppose he'll make any regular charge," said he; "but he'll
expect you to give him something,--whatever you please."

"But we haven't anything," said Scott to me. "We have our return tickets
to Willisville, and that's about all."

"Perhaps we can't go back, after all," said Harry, glumly, while Tom
Myers and his brother George began to drop their lower jaws again.

I did not believe that the pilot-boat people would ask to see the boys'
money before they took them on board; but I couldn't help feeling that
it would be pretty hard for them to go ashore at the city and give
nothing for their passages but promises, and so I called Rectus on one
side, and proposed to lend the fellows some money. He agreed, and I
unpinned a banknote and gave it to Scott. He was mightily tickled to get
it, and vowed he'd send it back to me in the first letter he wrote (and
he did it, too).

The pilot-schooner did not come very near us, but she lowered a boat
with two men in it, and they rowed up to the steamer. Some of our
sailors let down a pair of stairs, and one of the men in the boat came
up to see what was wanted. The purser was telling him, when the captain,
who was standing on the upper deck, by the pilot-house, sung out:

"Hurry up there, now, and don't keep this vessel here any longer. Get
'em out as quick as you can, Mr. Brown."

The boys didn't stop to have this kind invitation repeated, and Scott
scuffled down the stairs into the boat as fast as he could, followed
closely by Harry Alden. Tom Myers and his brother George stopped long
enough to bid each of us good-bye, and shake hands with us, and then
they went down the stairs. They had to climb over the railing to the
platform in front of the wheel-house to get to the stairs, and as the
steamer rolled a little, and the stairs shook, they went down very
slowly, backward, and when they got to the bottom were afraid to step
into the boat, which looked pretty unsteady as it wobbled about under
them.

"Come, there! Be lively!" shouted the captain.

Just then, Rectus made a step forward. He had been looking very
anxiously at the boys as they got into the boat, but he hadn't said
anything.

"Where are you g