The communication was, to say the least of it, mysterious; but, because Lossing was a fool, he did not see so many possibilities in it as a man of more imagination might have done. Moreover, having failed to discover the suitable occupation, the before-mentioned, he was feeling that the end of his tether approached, and appreciated the loneliness of the void which lay beyond. So, with all before him, and nothing behind, he determined to find out how the matter lay with his own eyes, and with that purpose journeyed to the hotel at Point Sebastian, now rebuilt with new magnificence.
It was the Floridan winter season, and the place was crowded, and amongst the crowd was Lossing’s old friend, Kent-Williams, again at the end of a new quarter’s allowance. Mr. Reginald Lossing stayed a week at Point Sebastian, and, by the kindly offices of Kent-Williams (who remained on as his guest), he learnt much about the manners and customs of Floridan society.
Knowing Patrick Onslow, he heard with interest about his marriage to Miss Elsie Kildare, and with amusement the details of the send-off.
“There wasn’t much money throwing about,” Kent-Williams explained, “but we did the thing in style for all that. She was married from here, and old Van Liew did the heavy father to perfection. I was best man in a two-dollar alpaca coat (I’ll trouble you) by way of purple and fine linen; and a singer-fellow, who was down here for D. T., howled ‘The voice that breathed o’er Eden’ as good as you could have got it done in Milan. There was a regular A1 feed to follow, and then the pair of them went off to the depôt behind the best trotting team in this section. They’re going to settle out west, but where exactly I don’t know, though I suppose we shall hear one of these days. We’d high jinks after they’d gone. Some of the boys got a bit full, and there was a trifle of a row, and a Balliol man and a Cracker from round here got laid out; but they were both regular toughs, and nobody missed them; and, besides, a thing like that lent local color to the wedding.”
“Yes,” said Lossing, “but touching this other matter I’ve been speaking about,” and went on to discourse about a certain steamer and some specie, which was a topic he had very much at heart just then. Kent-Williams picked up the subject with interest. There seemed to be money in it, and money was a commodity which he most ardently desired.
That was not the first conference they had had by any means, nor was it the last, for some projects take much pre-arranging, especially if the projectors are not gentlemen of any marked ability or experience. But, at the end of a week from Mr. Lossing’s first appearance at Point Sebastian, a definite plan had grown in their heads, and with a small equipment they set out in a 10-ton schooner for a down-coast river said to lead into the Everglades—they and five others, whereof two were disrated nautical men, and one an engineer.
The saga of their doings for the next six months does not appear, but it is known that the schooner returned twice, and took back with her provisions and digging implements (which were paid for in yellow English gold), and each time gathered two or three more recruits of varied tints. There must have been quite a colony of them out there, and legends floated out from the ’Glades of strife amongst themselves and of a fracas with Seminole Indians. But nothing definite transpired, and, in fact, the exact location of the colony itself was quite unknown. That part of Florida does not attract the explorer for many reasons.
It was not, I may say, till some seven months later that Messrs. Kent-Williams and Lossing deigned to reappear before the eyes of polite society, and then (for some reason which may not be very comfortably explained) it was on one of the Royal Mail Company’s steamboats bound homewards from a port of Eastern South America. It might have been remarked that Lossing carried a newly healed scar above his right eyebrow.
The pair of them sat in cool cane chairs under the shade of the awning, watching in silence the low shores dip under the sea, and smoking Brazilian cigars with massive contentment.