"Of course I do."
"He was a reality," Harry went on soberly. "After you had gone he appeared again. We had it hot and heavy. I saw your boat coming, and I yelled—-"
"I heard you," Tom interposed. "We got along as speedily as we could."
"And you didn't find me," finished Harry. "That brute hit me over the head with something. We clinched and rolled into the gulf together. That was the last that I remember clearly for some time. For a long time I had a dream that I was bobbing about in water, and that I had my arms around a floating log. By and by I came to sufficiently to discover that the dream was a reality. I was holding to the log in grim earnest. How I came to find the log I can't imagine. I think, while more than half unconscious, I must have been swimming straight out into the gulf. Then I must have touched the log and clung to it instinctively. Anyway, when I recovered more fully I knew that the 'long-shore lights looked thousands of miles away. I was too weak even to dream of trying to swim back, or to push the log before me. So I got a stout piece of cord out of one of my pockets and lashed myself to the log. I was afraid I might become unconscious again. A part of the time I was unconscious.
"Well after daylight I saw a sloop headed my way. It didn't look as though it would go straight by either. So I waved my handkerchief—-my hat was gone. After a while the skipper of the sloop saw me and headed in for me. It was a sloop that carries the mails to Hetherton, a village that has no rail connection.
"The captain hauled me aboard, questioned me, looked as though he more than half doubted my yarn, and then put me to bed in the cabin of the sloop. He attended to me as best he could. When we reached Hetherton, about noon, a doctor patched me up. I had something to eat, bought this new hat, and hired a driver to take me ten miles to the railway. Then I came over here as soon as I could, and—-pardon me, but I'm feeling weak. I'll sit down right here."
Harry sat down heavily on the wall.
"Why didn't you wire me?" asked Tom.
"Why, you didn't doubt but that I'd turn up as surely as any other bad egg, did you?" questioned Harry, looking up.
"Chum, I wouldn't admit it, even to myself, but I feared you were dead.
But we mustn't waste time talking. Describe that black man to me, and—-"