When Captain Burke communicated to Mr. Portman and Mr. Burdette the news that nine of their passengers had offered to ship as a crew, the sailing-master and the first mate shook their heads. They did not believe that the vessel could be worked by parsons.

"But there isn\'t anybody else!" exclaimed Burke.[Pg 204] "We\'ve got to get away, and they\'re all able-bodied, and they have more sense than most landsmen we can ship. And besides, here are five experienced seamen on board, and I say, let\'s try the parsons."

"All right," said Mr. Burdette. "If you\'re willing to risk it, I am."

Mr. Portman also said he was willing, and the engineer and his assistant, who were getting very nervous, agreed to the plan as soon as they heard of it.

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[Pg 205] 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 en[Pg 206]deavored 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.[Pg 207]

"He must have been watching for us," said Captain Burke to Mrs. Cliff, "and he put out from one of the wharves as soon as we hove in sight. Shirley is a good fellow! You can trust to him to look out for his friends!"

In a very short time the six powerful negro oarsmen had Shirley\'s boat alongside, and in a few seconds after that, he stood upon the deck of the Summer Shelter. Burke was about to spring forward to greet his old comrade, but he stepped back to give way to Mrs. Cliff, who seized the hand of Shirley and bade him a most hearty welcome, although, had she met him by herself elsewhere, she would not have recognized him in the neat travelling suit which he now wore.

Shirley was delighted to meet Burke and Mrs. Cliff, he expressed pleasure in making the acquaintance of Miss Croup, who, standing by Mrs. Cliff\'s side, was quickly introduced, and he looked with astonishment at the body of queer-looking men who were gathered on the deck, and who appeared to be the crew of the yacht. But he wasted no time in friendly greetings nor in asking questions, but quickly informed Burke that they were all too late, and that the Dunkery Beacon had sailed two days before.

"And weren\'t you here to board her?" cried Burke.

"No," said Shirley; "our steamer didn\'t arrive until last night!"

Burke and Mrs. Cliff looked at each other in dismay. Tears began to come into Willy Croup\'s eyes, as they nearly always did when anything unusual suddenly hap[Pg 208]pened, and all the members of the Synod, together with Mr. Portman and Mr. Burdette, and even the two engineers, who had come up from below, pressed close around Shirley, eager to hear what next should be said.

Everybody on board had been informed during the trip from Nassau of the errand of the yacht, for Mrs. Cliff thought she would be treating those generous and kind-hearted clergymen very badly if she did not let them know the nature of the good work in which they were engaged. And so it had happened that everybody who had sailed from Nassau on the yacht had hoped,—more than that, had even expected,—for the Dunkery Beacon was known to be a very slow steamer,—to find her in the harbor of Kingston taking on goods or perhaps coaling, and now all knew that even Shirley had been too late.

"This is dreadful!" exclaimed Mrs. Cliff, who was almost on the point of imitating Willy in the matter of tears. "And they haven\'t any idea, of course, of the dangers which await them."

"I don\'t see how they could know," said Shirley, "for of course if they had known, they wouldn\'t have sailed!"

"Did you hear anything about her?" asked Burke. "Was she all right when she arrived?"

"I have no doubt of that!" was the answer. "I made inquiries last night about the people who would most likely be consignees here, and this morning I went to a house on Harbor Street,—Beaver & Hughes. This house, in a way, is the Jamaica agent of the owners. I got there before the office was open, but I didn\'t find[Pg 209] out much. She delivered some cargo to them and had sailed on time!"

"By George!" cried Burke, "Captain Horn was right! They could hardly get a chance to safely interfere with her until she had sailed from Kingston, and now I bet they are waiting for her outside the Caribbees!"

"That\'s just what I thought," said Shirley; "but of course I didn\'t say anything to these people, and I soon found out they didn\'t know much except so far as their own business was concerned. It\'s pretty certain from what I have heard that she didn\'t find any letters here that would make her change her course or do anything out of the way,—but I did find something! While I was talking with one of the heads of the house, the mail from New York, which had come over in my steamer too late to be delivered the night before, was brought in, and one of the letters was a cable message from London to New York to be forwarded by mail to Jamaica, and it was directed to \'Captain Hagar, of the Dunkery Beacon, care of Beaver & Hughes.\' As I had been asking about the steamer, Beaver or Hughes, whichever it was, mentioned the message. I told him on the spot that I thought it was his duty to open it, for I was very sure it was on important business. He considered for a while, saying that perhaps the proper thing was to send it on after Captain Hagar by mail; but when he had thought about it a little he said perhaps he had better open it, and he did. The words were just these:—

"\'On no account leave Kingston Harbor until further orders.—Blackburn.\' Blackburn is the head owner."[Pg 210]

"What did you say then," asked Mrs. Cliff, very earnestly, "and what did he say?"

"I didn\'t say anything about her being a treasure ship," replied Shirley. "If it was not known in Jamaica that she was carrying that gold, I wasn\'t going to tell it; for there are as many black-hearted scoundrels here as in any other part of the world! But I told the Beaver & Hughes people that I also had a message for Captain Hagar, and that a friend of mine was coming to Kingston in a yacht, and that if he arrived soon I hadn\'t a doubt that we could overhaul the Dunkery Beacon, and give the Captain my message and the one from London besides, and that we\'d try to do it, for it was very important. But they didn\'t know me, and they said they would wait until my friend\'s yacht should arrive, and then they would see about sending the message to Captain Hagar. Now, I\'ve done enough talking, and we must do something!"

"What do you think we ought to do?" asked Burke.

"Well, I say," answered Shirley, "if you have any passengers to put ashore here, put them ashore, and then let\'s go after the Dunkery Beacon and deliver the message. A stern chase is a long chase, but if I\'m to judge by the way this yacht caught up to the Antonina and passed her, I believe there\'s a good chance of overhauling the Dunkery Beacon before the pirates get hold of her. Then all she\'s got to do is to steam back to Kingston."

"But suppose the pirates come before she gets back," said Mrs. Cliff.[Pg 211]

"Well, they won\'t fool with her if she is in company," replied Shirley. "Now, and what do you say?" he asked, addressing Burke, but glancing around at the others. "I don\'t know how this ship\'s company is made up, or how long a stop you are thinking of making here, or anything about it! But you\'re the owner............