"To name the boat."
"Oh, that's all right!" said Commodore Martin. "The General named her himself. She's the Hail Columbia."
"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."
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!