"She's a beauty. All right, Mr. Collier, I'll get ready just as fast as I can. And you ought to see a feather star I got to-day. It wasn't so awfully deep down either."
"I'll see it later," was the reply, "hurry and get ready now; I don't want to be late going over there. Their launch is to come at half-past six and it is twenty after now, so that you need to move as fast as you know how."
"Right, sir," answered Colin, and off he sped.
The yacht was the finest of its kind that the boy had ever boarded and he spent a very pleasant evening, the more so as the owner of the vessel had his family aboard, including his son Paul, a lad almost the same age as Colin. Mr. Murren was a wealthy capitalist, who had financed a chain of drug-stores throughout the country and still kept a large amount of stock in them. This corporation used many thousands of sponges annually, needing moreover a high-grade article which was found difficult to procure. It had been thought wise to investigate the question of buying a sponge farm, and he had been asked to look into the matter. Accordingly, he was taking a run down the coast, but had come first to see the American Vice Consul at Bermuda—to whom he was related by marriage.
"I heard a good deal about that sponge-farming business," said Colin, when the other boy told
him this. "Dr. Crafts told me how it was worked."
"All the more reason for you to join us," his new friend responded. "I hope you're coming."
"I hope so, too," Colin answered, "and it's likely enough that we will, since you say your father has been kind enough to ask us. I think Mr. Collier has nearly finished what he wanted to do in Bermuda, and if you are going straight to Florida, it would save us a lot of time, as well as being a jolly trip in itself."
"Going to do more coral-hunting?" the other boy queried, for Colin had told him about his Bermuda work.