“Well,” responded Bob, “there’ll have to be that condition. My parents pay my way, and they tell me what I’m goin’ to do.”
Tom reached out his hand. Thereupon, Hal could do no less. As the three boys, acquaintances of but a little over an hour, awkwardly shook hands, Tom said:
“If everything is all right, an’ youah mothah lets yo’, come to my house about three o’clock to-morrow. Hal and I ah fo’ced to attend school till that ouah.”
“I hope Mac approves,” added Bob, still nettled over this condition. “I suppose you make fishin’ trips now and then,” he went on. “Do you ever camp out?”
Hal snorted, and slapped Tom on the back.
“Say,” he chuckled, “do you hear that? Go fishin’ sometimes? Do we camp out? Kid,” he added solemnly, “we do go fishin’—sometimes. And them sometimes is every Friday at noon, when our season opens, and that’s now, and we camp out from that till Monday mornin’. That’s all.”
Bob’s jaw fell. From Friday noon till Monday morning. The possibility of parental protest fell on him like a wet blanket.
“Where do you go?” he asked hastily.
Tom thereupon disclosed the nature and practice of the select quartette of adventurers. Three years before, Hal Burton, Mac Gregory, Tom Allen, and the now expelled boy, had come into possession, through Mac’s father, of a serviceable old life-saving boat. Rigging up a sail, the four boys had made a long cruise out of Pensacola Bay and along the gulf coast to Perdido Bay.
On the eastern shore of this ocean bayou rises a considerable bluff crowded with dense pine trees. On this, about ten miles from the gulf, the boys on their first cruise located a camp. The following spring, Hal brought with him enough money to purchase a 10-horsepower motor, which was installed in the life boat—the Escambia. That year, by purchase of “culls” from the Perdido River saw mills and a vigilant search for drift timber, the club managed to secure material to build a cabin.