Sam looked troubled. “Dye ma hair?” he replied, striving to maintain a puzzled expression and to speak in casual tones. “I guess you is jokin’. Ah don’t dye ma hair, Boss. No, sir, ma wool’s jus’ as the Lord made it.”
“Well why did you shave off your whiskers?” asked Tom. “Thought you looked too old to suit those darky girls in Nassau?”
Sam was now genuinely uneasy. “Ah doan’ bother wif she,” he declared indignantly, and unconsciously lapsing into the Conch vernacular. “Ah always shaves. Yaas, sir, Ah never grow no whiskers. Wha’ fo’ yo’ arsk such interrogation, Chief?”
“I guess a shark must have bitten it off,” suggested Frank in an undertone nudging Tom slyly, “or perhaps it was in the way when he dove after corals to show to some other Northerners looking for white corals.”
Sam turned and stared at the boys in amazement. “Lawd bless yo’!” he exclaimed. “Den fo’ a fac’ yo’ knowed me an’ was jus’ pretendin’ yo’ didn’t all tha’ time!”
“Of course!” replied Tom trying to keep a sober face as he saw Sam’s surprise and chagrin at having been discovered, “you must have thought we were green.”
For a moment, poor Sam seemed utterly dispirited. He had taken the utmost pride in his clever disguise and now, after all, these two boys had penetrated it. If that were so, then no doubt, others had done the same and Mr. Pauling and Mr. Henderson would blame him.
But the next instant a relieved look swept over his good-matured face as he caught sight of the two gentlemen trying to stifle their laughs, and, realizing it had all been a plant, he burst into a hearty roar of merriment over the way he had been fooled.
“Ah guess yo’ young gent’men did sure 'nough get ma goat!” he exclaimed, “an’ Ah’m jus’ boun’ fo’ to get yours an’ knife a sh’ak.”
Now that the boys had had their sport with Sam they found him a most interesting companion, and standing in the bows of the speeding launch, asked him innumerable questions about the various islets, the birds, the fish and the reefs they passed. It was nearly sundown when they sighted the island where it had been agreed they would meet Rawlins—a lovely palm-fringed islet with silvery-white beaches, and, much to the boys’ surprise, they saw the roofs of buildings peeping from among the foliage.