“More like a fruit salad,” remarked Mr. Hawkins, as he examined the contents of the pitcher and made out the flavoring slices of oranges and pineapples. “Funny the cook of the steamer couldn’t think of something like this.”
Jerry then served the following menu:
Oysters on the shell with lemon
Oyster Stew
Boiled Hard Shell Crabs with Red Pepper
Fried Red Fish
Hot Baked Beans
Stewed Corn
Ship’s Biscuits
Shredded Pineapple
Black Coffee
“Boys,” said the Michigan lumber dealer an hour later, as he left the table, “I never had a meal like that in Chicago. Do you cook like that in the camp you’ve been telling about?”
Mac laughed. “You bet your life,” he answered. “Why not? That’s why we hang out around here. And if we were in camp a month, I reckon we could have a different sort of fish every day.”
About three-thirty o’clock, a cloud of black smoke out in the gulf told that Captain Joe and Hal had lost no time, and at four-fifteen, the ocean tug Sea Fox made fast to the anchored steamer. Captain Joe had made his bargain at the tug office, and there was nothing to cause delay. Had there been a supply of gasoline, Mac would have remained behind and gone on the Escambia to the club house. But, after a filial conference, the life boat was made fast to the steamer, and the tug crew clambered aboard and raised the Ward’s anchor.
Hawsers were passed aboard, and Captain Joe, who had left the Three Sisters in Pensacola and returned with Hal on the tug, took the wheel. The stout little tug then fell to her work, and with straining cables, sharp commands back and forth between Captain Joe and the skipper of the Sea Fox, the rescued steamer was got slowly about and headed out the pass. A quarter of an hour later, the smoke hidden sea tug, with its deep laden tow far astern was well on her way to Pensacola Bay.
When the Elias Ward’s “mud hook” dropped again, it was nearly midnight. One man was watching and waiting on the Long Wharf in Pensacola, for the incoming steamer, and, while the Sea Fox was yet casting off her hawsers, the skiff of a vigilant reporter hurried alongside.
“Captain Joe,” shouted the enterprising young journalist, as he scrambled up the steamer’s ladder, “get a move on—it’s nearly midnight, and them dead ones over at the tug office don’t know a thing. Gimme the story in rag time.”