“Say, you’ve been on boats a good deal,” remarked Skipper Tom, after watching him.
“Some,” admitted the Florida boy, quietly. “I reckon I’d rather be on a boat than anywhere else in the whole world.”
Jeff remained at the wheel until he had piloted them out of the Everglades and back into Lake Okeechobee. The two dead ’gators were rigged to the stern of the rowboat, in tow, and the small boat’s bow line made fast astern on the launch. In this order the start was made for the forty-mile trip up the lake.
“I’m going to spell you at the wheel a bit, now, Jeff,” said Tom Halstead. “But you can have the wheel again, whenever you want it.”
“That’ll be most all o’ the forty miles ahead of us, then, I reckon,” declared young Randolph.
It was slow work, indeed, getting back, not much more than seven miles per hour being possible. Supper, picnic-style, was served not long after dark. It was nearing the hour of ten when the boat at last rounded slowly in at the pier.
“Let me take her in,” begged Jeff Randolph, who was again at the wheel.
“Go ahead,” nodded Tom Halstead, good-humoredly. “I know you can do it.”
“Jeff,” laughed Henry Tremaine, “you ought to apply for membership in the famous Motor Boat Club of the Kennebec.”
“Wouldn’t I like to belong, though?” sighed the Florida boy.