bia_."

"Admiral," shouted Boatswain Bob Fogg, "she's beginning to float. You
get away forward there, beyond the mast. Captain, you and the Commodore
get in the middle. Now, Cook, you and the Crew pull hard a minute, and
we'll be out of the mud."

The Admiral obeyed, although there was hardly room to squeeze into, and
the mast crowded his back a little. The Cook and the Crew also obeyed,
and the _Hail Columbia_ suddenly shot away from the bank, and around the
head of the rotten old wooden pier.

"If there ain't those three landlubbers," exclaimed Boatswain Fogg, "out
on the pier head. And they've got a lot of half-bricks to spatter us
with."

[Illustration: THE YACHT CLUB STARTS ON ITS ANNUAL CRUISE.]

There they were; but at that moment the wind came up with a sudden puff,
and filled the sail which the genius of the General had added to the
motive power of that "yot." It was just at the wrong moment, for Captain
Tommy Conners and Commodore Gus Martin were having an argument over an
extra oar they had found in the bottom of the boat, and they were
rocking it badly. The Cook was rowing his best, but the tip of the boat
sent his oar deep under water, and the Crew suddenly found his oar
lifted out into the air.

"Joe McGinnis, you've caught a crab," exclaimed Boatswain Fogg. But
before he could say anything to the Captain and the Commodore, the three
landlubbers were at work.

Splash, splash, splatter! how those bricks and sticks did fall around
the _Hail Columbia_!

"Oh dear!" said Admiral Stuyvesant Rankin to himself, in the bows. "If
the yacht upsets, I'm the only member of the club that's got a new coat
on."

The breeze came fresher and fresher, and in a minute more the _Hail
Columbia_ was out of reach of the "battery" on the pier head. Her sable
owner, however, was watching her from the door of his cabin with genuine
pride.

"Don't she go! Don't she jest slip fru de watah! She does moah sailin'
to de squar' foot dan any odder yot on de ribber."

So she did, if he meant that it took her longer to travel that foot, or
any other.

It was no joke to be "Bo's'n" of the _Hail Columbia_, as Bob Fogg soon
found out.

"Tell you what, boys," he said, "it's 'cause she hasn't any keel on her.
I have to keep steering all the while. There's no saying where she won't
go to."

"Keep along shore," shouted the Admiral from the bows. "You're heading
out into the river."

"Now, Sty, if you think you can steer this y