Perk was softly singing to himself some marine ditty he had picked up in the course of his adventurous life afloat and ashore and which had for a title “Rolling Down to Old Mohea”–it thrilled him to the core to feel that he was luckily able to afford Jack just the assistance the other required so as to perfect his plan of campaign.
Now he believed he could glimpse the amphibian overhead–yes, the moon, poking her nose out from behind a bank of clouds, allowed him to make certain–Jack had swung back and was circling, so as to keep the sloop within range of his vision.
“Just like a guardeen angel,” mused the enraptured Perk, standing at his post and sending frequent curious as well as proud glances aloft, “as he told me he meant to be. Say, ain’t this simply great stuff we’ve struck?–never felt so joyous in all my life as when I smashed them two tear-bombs down on the deck here an’ busted up that fightin’ mob. Zowie! how quick they got a move on, every single man but the one lone dickey we found knocked out down below-stairs. Ev’rything movin’ along like silk–who cares whether school keeps or not, with us boys on the top wave o’ success.”
Then he concluded to stop premature boasting, knowing very well that as in a game of baseball nothing is settled until the last man has been put out.
So the voyage down the coast continued steadily enough, the minutes running along into hours, with faithful Perk keeping steadfastly at his new job.
From time to time he would find the plane hovering directly over his head, and was able to catch certain signals which he could understand because of a previous arrangement he and Jack had.
Although the moving sloop was not over a mile or so from the shore line, it was next to impossible for Perk to catch a fleeting glimpse of land, so as to get his bearings.
“Huh!” he told himself at one time after he had received instructions to draw a bit further toward the open gulf, as he was approaching some point of land jutting into the water, and thus making a shoal possibly covered with coon-oysters, on which he was apt to pull up hurriedly with disastrous results, “this here is like flyin’ blind at a five thousand-foot ceilin’,–Jack, he c’n see the land by usin’ the night glasses, so it’s a good thing I c’n get tips from him right along. Gee! this sure is gettin’ some monotonous, keepin’ this old motor hummin’ when it’s on the blink so bad. Must be a wheen past midnight, I’d say, an’ we ought to be clost to them Ten Thousand Islands by now.”
He had been keeping close watch on the stars and although making no claims to being a first-class woodsman, Perk could tell the time of night by the heavenly bodies setting one after another, which would account for his late confident assertion that morning could not be so very far distant.
Once only during all this time did Perk happen to see a far distant light out at sea. It interested him more or less and naturally caused him to speculate as to whether it might have any connection with the great game in which he and Jack were now engaged. Everything he had ever heard or read connected with the Mexican Gulf seemed to pass in review through his active mind–there was a halo of romance hovering about that historical sheet of salt water and while Perk was not much given to flights of fancy, he found himself picturing some of the thrilling scenes he had recently read about, after learning that the next locality in which he and Jack would play their adventurous part was along the Florida Gulf Coast.