"Very little will be required if he joins Poyor and myself. The cost of living in this country is small, for nature provides bountifully."
The captain of the schooner, a full-blooded negro, was told to head his craft for Progresso as soon as the wind should spring up again, and then Mr. Emery asked many questions concerning the city the boys had seen, while their answers only made the sailing master more eager to remain with Cummings.
"This is hardly fair," Neal finally said. "All the time we have been telling you of our adventures, and not one word have we heard regarding your movements. I would like to know where the three boats we out-sailed went to on the night after leaving the yacht, and where this schooner was found?"
"It is not a long story," Mr. Emery replied. "When you disappeared in the darkness we continued on the same course, and succeeded in keeping the three boats well together. At sunrise your craft was not in sight. We held on all that day and the next, finally arriving at Cozumel where we stayed three days in the hope you would appear. Then this schooner touched at the island, and I chartered her to search for you. We have been cruising up and down the coast ever since, for it seemed positive your boat reached the land in this immediate vicinity."
"How long would you have stayed here?"
"Not many days more, for we had begun to believe you were picked up by a vessel. Knowing Jake could handle a small craft better, perhaps than any other member of the crew, and also that she was the most seaworthy of the four tenders, it did not seem reasonable she had foundered while the others went through in safety."
"Then we came out just in time."
"Yes, for I had no idea you could be so far up this way, and we should have left the locality as soon as the wind would permit."
Jake wanted to ask the sailing master how it happened that he had made such a mistake in his reckoning; but it was a delicate question, and he thought it best to wait until Mr. Walters had left them, when Neal's father could probably give the desired explanation.