"That's where I learned to sail. And after father died I took my share of what he left us and bought a cruising boat. I didn't like working on the grove—messing around with smelly fertilizer, sawing off dead limbs, doing all that silly spraying. And my brother Jim could do it so much better. So I fished and took out winter tourists on excursions: things like that. Summers I'd go cruising down the coast. I would be gone for weeks at a time. I've been out in some fearful storms, too.
"I got to know a lot of strange characters who live on those west coast keys. They're bad, some of them—kill you for a few dollars. Others are real friendly, like the old fellow who told me about the buried treasure. He was almost dead of fever when I found him in his little palmetto shack. I got medicine for him, stayed until he was well. That's why he told me about the gold."
"Think of that!" says Mrs. Mumford. "He had been a pirate himself, hadn't he?"
"Well, hardly," says Rupert. "A tinsmith, I think he told me. He was a tough old citizen, though—an atheist or something like that. Very profane. Used chewing tobacco."
Mrs. Mumford shudders. "And you were alone with such a desperado, on a desert island!" she gasps, rollin' her eyes.
"Oh, I can generally look out for myself," says Rupert, tappin' his hip pocket.
He was fairly beamin', Rupert was, for Mrs. Mumford was not only lettin' him write his own ticket, but was biddin' his stock above par. And all the rest of the day he swells around chesty, starin' out at the ocean as important as if he owned it all.
"At last," says I, "we know the romance of Rupert."
"I hope it doesn't keep me awake nights," says Vee.
"Look at the bold, bad ex-school teacher," says I. "Wonder what blood-curdlin' mind plays he's indulgin' in now? There! He's unlimberin' the glasses again."