"Who said clothes don't make the man?" he demanded aloud. "They make him dance at any rate. It's against the rules of the game to do it in rags."
Through the trees he had brilliantly lighted vistas of a broad hotel-porch, whereon a crowd surged ceaselessly in all directions with but one common impulse—to keep in step with the band. Again Sam's feet rattled on the flooring, and again his body rocked from side to side.
Then, abruptly, without waiting for the end of the music, he became rigid.
"Why not?" he demanded.
There was nobody to explain.
"Once more, why not? Now is the time for any grain of sense that may happen to be in my nut to speak up, or forever after do the oyster act. I wait—I still wait. I hear no answer. Therefore I have no sense. Therefore—why not?"
He went forward quickly, cast loose from the mooring-buoy, scrambled aft to the engine, cranked it with a nervous jerk at the fly-wheel, and headed out into the river.
For half an hour the launch ran down-stream, passing numerous craft that were obviously bound for the place of the whirling feet.
Sam maintained a close watch upon the procession. He was looking for a particular vessel, and eventually he believed he sighted it, for with a nod of satisfaction he altered his course and bore in toward the cluster of islands that included those of Mr. Witherbee, Mr. Davidson, and their neighbor vigilantes.
Now he extinguished his lantern—he never bothered with port and starboard lamps—and proceeded cautiously into the little archipelago that stood aloof from the other islands in its exclusiveness. Somewhere, probably in a dark shadow near a shore, lurked a patrol-boat.