Frank opened his eyes at this.
“No, I didn’t, but it’s a fact; and when I told them that I didn’t have to be paid to stay and would not go if they felt so strongly about it, they came right around and said, ‘Go, and God bless you.’”
Kenneth’s eyes moistened a little as he harked back to the time, and a vivid picture of his far away Northern home arose before him. “Well, old chap,” he continued, laying his hand on Frank’s knee, “they have been with me heartily ever since, and I believe that your people would feel the same about you and be proud of your pluck, too.”
The two looked each other in the eyes a minute—one fair, the other dark—utterly dissimilar in appearance, but both possessed of indomitable will and courage—then Frank’s hand slowly sought that of his friend and gripped it hard.
“Ken, I’m with you.”
“Good,” was the other’s only answer.
Arthur’s decision was soon made when he found that Kenneth and Frank had determined to put it through. The three were knit together in a bond of fellowship hard to break.
The equinoctial storms were raging through the Gulf at this period, and the boys made good use of the time to buy, shape, and put in place a new mainmast; to tighten up the rigging and repaint the boat’s sides, covering up the scars made by the inhospitable river. “His Nibs” was also refitted, so that the staunch little craft looked like new, and was much admired. The boys rambled all over the old city, from the above-surface, tomb-like cemetery, to the lively creole quarter. Ransom visited many ships in port and studied the lines and construction of ocean-going vessels, river craft and lugger fishing boats. All sorts of craft congregated at this harbor for all kinds of purposes—for cotton, for sugar, for every sort of commodity, in fact, even down to mules. Ransom watched them all, went aboard some and talked with the mates and engineers. His intelligent questions won him courteous, thoughtful answers. He took notes, made sketches, and in every way possible took advantage of this opportunity to fit himself for his life’s work.
At last, on the first of May, 1899, the storms having passed, the “Gazelle” being as fit and trim as a boat could be, the crew bade good-by to the many friends they had made, cast off from their moorings and started for the salt sea.
For two days they sailed through the delta of the Mississippi, and then entered that dangerous short cut to the Gulf, Cubit’s Gap—a passage flanked on either side by shoals which even the “Gazelle” could not sail over. It was lined by the skeletons of wrecked vessels, and made the boys hesitate a little before taking the risk. But “nothing venture nothing gained,” they thought, and a successful venture meant almost a hundred miles gained.