t Russian bark to the little tug that we had signalled; and
some of us, I know, were sorry we could not speak Russian, so we could
tell our rescuers more plainly what we thought of them.

When we reached Savannah, we went directly to the hotel where Rectus and
I had stopped on our former visit, and there we found ourselves the
objects of great attention,--I don't mean we three particularly, but the
captain and all of us. We brought the news of the burning of the
"Tigris," and so we immediately knew that nothing had been heard of the
two boats. Corny was taken in charge by some of the ladies in the hotel,
and Rectus and I told the story of the burning and the raft twenty or
thirty times. The news created a great sensation, and was telegraphed to
all parts of the country. The United States government sent a revenue
cutter from Charleston, and one from St. Augustine, to cruise along the
coast, and endeavor to find some traces of the survivors, if there were
any.

But two days passed and no news came. We thought Corny would go crazy.

"I know they're dead," she said. "If they were alive, anywhere, we'd
hear from them."

But we would not admit that, and tried, in every way, to prove that the
people in the boats might have landed somewhere where they could not
communicate with us, or might have been picked up by a vessel which had
carried them to South America, or Europe, or some other distant place.

"Well, why don't we go look for them, then, if there's any chance of
their being on some desert island? It's dreadful to sit here and wait,
and wait, and do nothing."

Now I began to see the good of being rich. Rectus came to me, soon after
Corny had been talking about going to look for her father and mother,
and he said:

"Look here, Will,"--he had begun to call me "Will," of late, probably
because Corny called me so,--"I think it _is_ too bad that we should
just sit here and do nothing. I spoke to Mr. Parker about it, and he
says, we can get a tug-boat, he thinks, and go out and do what looking
we can. If it eases our minds, he says, there's no objection to it. So
I'm going to telegraph to father to let me hire a tug-boat."

I thought this was a first-class idea, and we went to see Messrs. Parker
and Darrell, who were merchants in the city, and the owners of the
"Tigris." They had been very kind to us, and told us now that they did
not suppose it would do any real good for us to go out in a tug-boat and
search along t