Mrs. Cliff's Yacht

by Frank R. Stockton

Captain Burke shook himself, pulled his cap to the front of his head, arranged his coat properly and buttoned it up, and began to give orders. "Now, then," said he, "all passengers going ashore, please step lively!" And while this lively stepping was going on, and during the leave-taking and rapid writing of notes to be sent to the homes of the clerical crew, he ordered Mr. Burdette to secure a pilot, attend to the clearance business, and make everything ready to cast off and get out of the harbor as soon as possible.

When the five reverend gentlemen who had decided not to accompany the Summer Shelter in her further voyaging had departed for the hotel, portmanteaus in hand, and amply furnished by Mrs. Cliff with funds for their return to their homes, the volunteer crew, most of them without coats or waistcoats, and all in a high picnic spirit, set to work with enthusiasm, doing more things than they knew how to do, and embarrassing Mr. Burdette a good deal by their over-willingness to make themselves useful. But this untrained alacrity was soon toned down, and early in the afternoon, the hawsers of the Summer Shelter were cast off, and she steamed out of the eastern passage of the harbor.

There were remarks made in the town after the departure of the yacht; but when the passengers who had been left behind, all clergymen of high repute, had related the facts of the case, and had made it understood that the yacht, whose filibustering purpose had been suspected by its former crew, was now manned by nine members of the Synod recently convened in Brooklyn, and under the personal direction of Mrs. Cliff, an elderly and charitable resident of Plainton, Maine, all distrust was dropped, and was succeeded in some instances by the hope that the yacht might not be wrecked before it reached Jamaica.

The pilot left the Summer Shelter; three of the clergymen shovelled coal; four of them served as deck hands; and two others ran around as assistant cooks and stewards; Mr. Portman and Mr. Burdette lent their hands to things which were not at all in their line of duty; Mrs. Cliff and Willy pared the vegetables, and cooked without ever thinking of stopping to fan themselves; while Captain Burke flew around like half-a-dozen men, with a good word for everybody, and a hand to help wherever needed. It was truly a jolly voyage from Nassau to Kingston.

The new crew was divided into messes, and Mrs. Cliff insisted that they should come to the table in the saloon, no matter how they looked or what they had been doing: on her vessel a coal-heaver off duty was as good as a Captain,—while the clergymen good-humoredly endeavored to preserve the relative lowliness of their positions, each actuated by a zealous desire to show what a good deck hand or steward he could make when circumstances demanded it.

Working hard, laughing much, eating most heartily, and sleeping well, the busy and hilarious little party on board the Summer Shelter steamed into the harbor of Kingston, after a much shorter voyage than is generally made from Nassau to that port.

"If I could get a crew of jolly parsons," cried Captain Burke, "and could give them a month's training on board this yacht, I'd rather have them than any crew that could be got together from Cape Horn to the North Pole!"

"And by the time you had made able seamen of them," said Mr. Burdette, who was of a conventional turn of mind, "they'd all go back to their pulpits and preach!"

"And preach better!" said Mr. Litchfield, who was standing by. "Yes, sir, I believe they would all preach better!"

When the anchor was dropped, not quite so promptly as it would have been done if the clerical crew had had any previous practice in this operation, Mr. Burke was about to give orders to lower a boat,—for he was anxious to get on shore as soon as possible,—when he perceived a large boat rowed by six men and with a man in the stern, rapidly approaching the yacht. If they were port officials, he thought, they were extremely prompt, but he soon saw that the man in the stern, who stood up and waved a handkerchief, was his old friend Shirley.