"I don't know how I look," muttered Billy Manners, stopping suddenly in his walking, "but I know how I feel," and he made a dash for the cabin, and was gone for some time, the others continuing their walk on deck.
In a few minutes a smiling negro in a white jacket and cap came out of the cabin carrying a tray containing cups of beef tea, which he offered to the boys, saying with a grin:
"Dis ain't like de beef soup yo' get at de 'cademy, sah, but mebby yo' would like a bite or two dis mon'in' to sha'pen yo' appetite fo' dinnah?"
"No, thanks, Bucephalus," said one of the boys, Dick Percival by name, who was walking arm in arm with Jack. "I don't need anything to sharpen my appetite, which is always good on sea or land."
"The idea of offering a fellow anything to eat when he feels as I do," growled Harry. "Take it away, Buck, or I'll throw you overboard."
The high sounding name of the negro was often contracted to Buck by the Hilltop boys, as in the present instance, but he was used to both, and answered as readily to one as to the other, now saying with a broad grin:
"Dat am a mistake, Mistah Harry. De worser yo' feel, de mo' yo' should put in yo' stomach, dat is to say when yo' get good nourishmental food like dis yer. Of co'se dey is detrimental substances which——"
"That sort of talk will make me sick if nothing else will," said Harry, hurrying away, while Jack and Dick sat down, and gazed out upon the horizon, while sipping their bouillon and nibbling at their biscuits.
"We will be in summer seas, as the advertisements call them, before long," said Jack. "The air is pleasant enough as it is. Down here in the summer it is pretty hot I take it, but in April it will be all right."
"Think of us cruising around the Spanish main where the old buccaneers used to roam," laughed Dick. "Perhaps we will dig up a pot of gold buried on one of the islands by some of them."