Frank and Kenneth scratched their heads; there were no shops near at hand, the bag was no earthly use, they were a long way from the anchorage, and the oysters were much too precious to be abandoned.
“What’s the matter with tying up the sleeves of this old coat and making a bag of it?” Frank’s inventive brain was beginning to work.
“That’s all right, if you don’t object,” was the reply.
An hour later two boys, one of them in his shirt sleeves, came stumbling along in the dusk toward the levee near which the “Gazelle” was anchored.
“‘Gazelle’ ahoy!” they hailed. “Have you got room for a bunch of oysters and a couple of appetites?”
Evidently there was plenty of room, for “His Nibs” came rushing across to take all three over, the “bunch of oysters” and the “two appetites” to the yacht, where they found two more appetites eagerly waiting their coming.
Ransom and his friends had planned to stay but ten days in New Orleans; just time enough to put in a new mast and refit generally for the long sea voyage before them. Their good intentions, however, were balked at every turn. The parents of all the boys, except Ransom’s, besought them to return; made all sorts of inducements to persuade them to give up the trip; did everything, in fact, except actually command them. A death in Clyde’s family made it imperative that he should go back, and it grieved the boys to have him leave. Clyde was as disappointed as any; and as he boarded the train to go North he said: “I’d give a farm to be coming instead of going.”
The crew was now reduced to three, and Ransom feared that Clyde’s return would influence the others and break up the cruise.
The letters to Frank and Arthur grew more and more insistent, until one day Chauvet came to Ransom. “Ken,” said he, “this is getting pretty serious. My people come as near saying that they’ll disown me if I don’t come back as they can without actually writing the words. I want to go the rest of the way and play the whole game, and it would be a low down trick to leave you stranded here without a crew.”
“Well,” said Kenneth, as he sat down by Frank’s side on the levee in the warm sunshine, “you’ll have to do as you think best, but—I never told you that my father and mother offered me their house if I would give up the trip, did I?”