“And eggs, and ham, and beans, and coffee, and fried potatoes, and canned peaches?” asked Case. “We’re sure going to celebrate, Captain Joe.”
“Well boys,” said the old captain, “if you want to go and make provision tanks of yourselves, you can do it, but for my part, I’m going to be careful in my eating, as I’m getting old! Just rig me up a simple little meal consisting of eight or ten of those twenty-five cent pancakes and half a dozen eggs and three or four cups of coffee, and I’ll try to worry through the day.”
“I don’t see how you can get along with anything less than a dozen pancakes and a gallon of coffee,” laughed Clay, “and I’ll go on shore and buy a box of the finest cigars to be had in Ogdensburg.”
Captain Joe held up a warning finger.
“Now look here, boys,” he said, “you know how I used to pull away at that dirty old pipe on the South Branch. I used to be ashamed of myself, smoking up your quarters, so after you left I quit the weed entirely. I haven’t smoked a pipe or cigar for a long time,” he added, proudly.
And so the breakfast was prepared as Captain Joe directed. The boys set out what little honey Teddy hadn’t succeeded in getting hold of, and the pancakes were greatly enjoyed. But the Captain didn’t finish his stunt.
“You boys are mighty good to an old man like me,” he said.
“Mighty good!” repeated Clay. “Don’t you remember when some sneak stole all the money we had been saving for a year to take us on the Amazon trip? Don’t you remember how we hustled and got a little more together, and how you were afraid we wouldn’t have enough, and might go broke in the Andes, and you took two hundred dollars and put it in a packet and told us to open it when we got into trouble? There is nothing on this boat you can’t have, Captain Joe.”
“Well,” said the old man, “I didn’t need the money, and, besides, I got it back. It didn’t cost me anything to lend it.”
“We needed it, though,” grinned Alex, “and we might have been back there yet if we hadn’t had it. You’re the luckiest man I know of or it would never have been returned. And we were lucky, too.”