e's a
beauty. Let's have a 'lection of officers before we start."

They were all agreed on that, but Joe McGinnis insisted that the
grown-up yacht clubs never had any elections.

"They just draw cuts, boys, and they give the longest straw to the man
that owns the club, to begin with."

"That's the best way," said Tommy Conners; "but the General's gone
home."

"I'll take his cut for him," shouted Bob Fogg. "I'll choose to be
Bo's'n, 'cause I know how to steer."

Nobody objected, although every member of the club said he knew how to
steer, and Sty Rankin had a lot of straws ready in half a minute.

Tommy Conners drew the longest straw, and said he would be Captain; but
when Gus Martin came next, and decided to be a Commodore, Tommy
muttered, ruefully, "I'd forgot about that."

Stuyvesant Rankin's memory was still better, for he had hardly compared
his straw with the others before he shouted, "I'll be Admiral of this
club."

Put Varick was so stunned by that that he only said, "I'm Cook; there
won't be any work for me this trip."

"What am I, then?" asked Joe McGinnis, with the shortest straw in his
hand.

"You?" said Bob Fogg; "why, you're the Crew. Take hold of that larboard
oar, and pull it out of the mud. There's those three landlubbers up on
the bank. They'd pelt us if they dared."

The three landlubbers were there, and they were making loud remarks
about the club, but the yacht was almost ready to float now, and no
attention could be paid to them.

Just beyond the little creek where General George Washington kept his
boat spread the busy waters of the Harlem River, with the great city of
New York on both sides, but not very close to the edge of it. It was a
very busy sheet of water indeed. There were small steamboats carrying
passengers here and there; little tug-boats tugged and puffed and
coughed at the sides of big schooners loaded with lumber from Maine;
long race-boats, with gayly dressed oarsmen, darted swiftly over the
water, like great wooden pickerel, they were so long and sharp and
narrow. There were fishing-boats, pleasure-boats, steam-launches, even
canoes that were driven by one man and a paddle. But among them all
there was no other craft like General George Washington's "yot."

"Boys," exclaimed Captain Conners, "we've forgotten."

"What?" said Admiral Rankin.

"To name the boat."

"Oh, that's all right!" said Commodore Martin. "The General named her
himself. She's the _Hail Colum