"Because here are the conchs, and Ul-we has enough for all of us."
"Those things!" cried Worth, in a tone of disgust. "You surely don't mean that they are good to eat?"
"Yes, I do," laughed Sumner, picking up one of the shells and showing Worth the white meat with which its exquisitely pink interior was filled. "I mean that these fellows can be made into the very best soup I know of."
"Seems to me I have seen that kind of a shell before," said Worth, "but I never knew that any one ever ate their contents."
"Of course you have seen the shells. You will find them in half the farm-houses of the country, where, with the point of the small end cut off, they are used as dinner horns. As for the eating part, you wait till Quorum gives you a chance to test it this evening. If you don't find it fully as good as sofkee, then I shall be mistaken."
The boys had been greatly disappointed at not finding either the Mantons' yacht nor the Transit awaiting them at the cape. Several times in the course of the afternoon they climbed to the top of an abandoned light-house tower near their camp, in the hope of sighting a sail bound in that direction. As they did so just before sunset, they saw several far over towards the main-land, but they were too distant for their character to be distinguished.
Never had they seen anything so exquisitely beautiful or so royally gorgeous as that Southern sunset, and they lingered at the top of the tower until the last of its marvellous flame tints had burned out, and the delicate crescent of the new moon was sinking into the 'Glades behind the distant pine-trees of the main-land.
At supper time Worth was introduced to conch soup, and he agreed with Sumner that it was fully equal to sofkee.
After supper the boys strolled over to the Indian camp, to which Lieutenant Carey was attracted soon afterwards by their shouts of laughter. He did not recognize the boys until they spoke to him, for they had persuaded Ul-we to array them as he had after the forest fire, and they were now in full Indian costume.