After an unusually late and happy breakfast, they sailed through the cut and into the beautiful bay to which it led. They soon discovered the camp to which Ko-wik-a belonged, and the canoe that had rescued him had the honor of bearing him to it. He was received with a wondering joy that was none the less real for its lack of extravagant manifestation. As Ul-we took the child from Sumner's arms, he turned his face away to hide the emotion that would be unbecoming in an Indian and a warrior. It was there, however, and the look of intense gratitude that he gave the boy was more expressive than any words that he could have uttered.
Then the Indians broke their camp, and they and the whites sailed away together to the appointed rendezvous on Cape Florida.
Chapter XL.
THE HAPPY ENDING OF THE CRUISE.
On their entire cruise our young canoemates had not enjoyed a day's run so much as they did this one in company with the Indians who had crossed the Everglades with them, but of whom they had seen so little. The wind was so fair that the boats without centre-boards could sail as well as those with, and the run was a series of match races, of which the Psyche and Cupid were winners in nearly every case.
As Ul-we's canoe had been lost the night before, the Lieutenant invited both him and the little Ko-wik-a to a sail in the Hu-la-lah, and even the self-contained young Indian was compelled to express his admiration of the graceful craft. When he ventured to ask what such a canoe would cost, and the price was named, his face indicated his despair at ever being able to accumulate such a sum, and he murmured:
"Heap money! Injun no get um."
At Cape Florida, while the camps were being pitched but a short distance from each other, the boys went with Ul-we to set another fish-trap, such as he had been about to prepare when Ko-wik-a ran away with his canoe the day before. The little fellow went with them, but he no longer showed any inclination to go sailing on his own hook. After Ul-we had fixed his trap they went over to a submerged bank that extends southward several miles from the cape. Here, while the boys waded in the shoal water collecting sea porcupines, urchins, tiny squids, bits of live coral, and numberless other marine curiosities, Ul-we was busy gathering and throwing into his canoe a quantity of big greenish shells that looked like so many rocks. When they were ready to go back, and Sumner saw this novel cargo, he exclaimed:
"Good! Now we will have some conch soup for dinner!"
"How do you know?" asked Worth.