"Then come, My friends, and, sitting well in order, strike The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars until I die." --TENNYSON. A brighter morning never flung its golden beams upon the dancing dominion of old Neptune than that bright May morning when the windlass of the Queer Fish creaked with the rising anchor, and the mainsails, topsails and top-gallants fluttered slowly out from her graceful spars. All Boston knew we were going, and a large number of people were out upon the piers to see us start. So we ran up the Stars and Stripes to our peak, and gave a rousing salute with our guns, as we moved majestically down the harbor. We were soon out of it, and "the world was all before us," our path to choose. Taking the line of the southeast, we got all of the gale into our bellying sails, and bowled along gleefully, with a good lookout at the mast-head, to spy a prize, or sing out, if a cruiser hove in sight. How could the Queer Fish even _start_ to sea without something funny happening? There was one incident which I must not omit mentioning. We had been overwhelmed with peddlers, bumboat women and fruit-sellers, for some time before our departure. Although they had all been warned to leave the ship in time, one of them, a Polish Jew, allowed his avarice to get the better of him, and remained parleying and auctioneering his trinkets till the anchor was up and we were fairly under way. He then coolly went to the captain, and requested to have a boat to be put ashore, when he was greeted by a sound rating, and an assurance that he couldn't leave the ship short of the Bay of Bengal. The astonishment of the unfortunate Hebrew can better be imagined than described. At first, he was simply crushed, and, like Shylock, kept a quiet despair. Then, as the land grew beautifully less behind us, terror and rage began to take possession of his soul. "Mine Gott! mine Gott!" he exclaimed, tearing up and down the deck, and wringing his hands. "V'at vill de vife of mine poosom zay v'en I comes not vonce more to mine house? Oh, Repecca, Repecca, mine peloved vife, varevell, varevell!" We all enjoyed his misery to our hearts' content, for he was an arrant skinflint, who had swindled three or four of the crew out of their very boots. The captain also enjoyed the sight until we brought up alongside a pilot-boat, on board of which we put the pork-despiser in a summary way, and left him to find his way back to Boston as best he might.