etter humor.

"The only thing that can be done with you boys," he said, "is to put you
on some tug or small craft that's going back to New York. If we meet
one, I'll lie to and let you off. But it will put me to a great deal of
trouble, and we may meet with nothing that will take you aboard. You
have acted very badly. If you had come right to me, or to any of the
officers, the moment you found we had started, I could have easily put
you on shore. There are lots of small boats about the piers that would
have come out after you, or I might even have put back. But I can do
nothing now but look out for some craft bound for New York that will
take you aboard. If we don't meet one, you'll have to go on to
Savannah."

This made us feel a little better. We were now in the lower bay, and
there would certainly be some sort of a vessel that would stop for the
boys. We all went to the forward deck and looked out. It was pretty cold
there, and we soon began to shiver in the wind, but still we stuck it
out.

There were a good many vessels, but most of them were big ones. We could
hardly have the impudence to ask a great three-masted ship, under full
sail, to stop and give us a lift to New York. At any rate, we had
nothing to do with the asking. The captain would attend to that. But
every time we came near a vessel going the other way, we looked about to
see if we could see anything of an officer with a trumpet, standing all
ready to sing out, "Sail ho!"

But, after a while, we felt so cold that we couldn't stand it any
longer, and we went below. We might have gone and stood by the
smoke-stack and warmed ourselves, but we didn't know enough about ships
to think of this.

We hadn't been standing around the stove in the dining-room more than
ten minutes, before the purser came hurrying toward us.

"Come, now," he said, "tumble forward! The captain's hailed a
pilot-boat."

"Hurrah!" said Scott; "we're going back in a pilot-boat, after all!" and
we all ran after the purser to the lower forward deck. Our engines had
stopped, and not far from us was a rough-looking little schooner with a
big "17" painted in black on her mainsail. She was "putting about," the
purser said, and her sails were flapping in the wind.

There was a great change in the countenances of Tom Myers and his
brother George. They looked like a couple of new boys.

"Isn't this capital?" said Scott. "Everything's turned out all right."

But all of a sudden he ch