At one time Perk out of curiosity–as well as a desire to be in a condition to state the amount of spoils he and Jack had “corraled” in their swoop upon the fighting smugglers and hijackers–took a pad of paper and a pencil and proceeded to go over the entire vessel, securing a rough invoice of the numerous piled-up cases bearing that foreign, burnt brand.
Then a temptation gripped him, and, as he took another “eyeful” sweep of the azure arch overhead, to again find the coast clear, he tortured himself with the vision of a pot of boiling coffee to go with his otherwise dry midday snack of lunch.
“Huh! no use talkin’, I jest can’t stand it any longer–got to have my coffee if I want to keep happy as a clam at high tide. Nothin’ to prevent me paddlin’ across once more to where I got these here greens. I noticed heaps an’ heaps o’ dry wood, broken branches, stems o’ palmetto leaves an’ such dandy trash for a quick fire. Might as well tote the machine-gun along, so’s to be ready for anything that comes–it could be a frisky twelve-foot ’gator wantin’ to climb me or mebbe one o’ them sly painters I been told they got down in this queer old country. Anyway, here you go, Perk, coffee pot an’ all.”
He was soon busily engaged in building his little fire, hoping no hostile eyes might detect the trailing smoke ascending above the tops of that palmetto clump. Then came the pleasing task of watching his coffee pot as it stood on the tilting firewood, a job that required constant vigilance if he hoped to save its precious contents from spilling.
Presently the odor began to fill him with delight and later on he found himself sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, and swallowing gulp after gulp of the amber fluid he loved so well.
Taken altogether it proved to be as satisfactory a little lunch as Perk had partaken of in some time. After finishing the entire contents of his coffee pot, he concluded it would be just as well for him to clean up, destroying all signs of the fire, and return to the sloop.
He had good reason to shake hands with himself because of this exhibition of caution, for later on, as the afternoon began to lengthen, with the sun starting down toward the western horizon, he suddenly began to catch faint sounds such as sent a sudden thrill through his whole nervous system.
“Dang it if I ain’t hearin’ somethin’ right like human voices,” he told himself, cocking up his head the better to listen, and applying a cupped hand to his right ear. “Yep, that’s a fact, an’ over in that quarter to boot,” nodding toward the northeast where his instinct told him the mainland must lie, even if some miles distant.
So, too, he decided later that the suspicious sounds kept growing louder, from which fact he judged the speakers were slowly but surely approaching his hiding place.
“All right, let ’em come along,” Perk muttered grimly as he clutched that deadly little hand machine-gun with which he could pour a rain of missiles in a comparatively speedy passage of time. “They can’t ditch me, I kinder guess, an’ nobody ain’t agoin’ to grab this crate if I have to shoot up the hull mob o’ galoots.”