"You told them city fellows all that?" exclaimed the delighted captain, "you talked to 'em like that, Charley?"
"Certainly, it was only the truth," said the lad, stoutly. "But it is your turn now, Captain. I am wild with curiosity."
"Lay to for a while, lad; I am expectin' another member for our crew any time now, and it's no use spinnin' the same yarn twice."
Charley's open face clouded a trifle, and he hesitated before he said, "I am not questioning your judgment, Captain, but you and I have camped out enough to know that a good camp-mate is about the scarcest article to be found. If we take in a stranger on this trip, which I surmise from the outfits is going to be a long one, the chances are more than even that he will turn out a quitter or a shirker."
The captain knocked the ashes from his pipe as he inquired, "Now who would you select for a third member, Charley?"
"I do not know anyone in Florida I would want to take a chance on for a long trip. I only know two fellows I would like to have along, and we can't get them. One is Walter Hazard, the Ohio boy who chummed with us down here for so long. The other is that little Bahama darky, Chris, whom Walter insisted on taking back north with him and putting in a school. There wasn't a yellow streak in either one, and Chris was a wonderful camp-fire cook."
"I wrote to Walt two days afore I wrote to you," observed the captain, calmly.
Charley stared at the simple old sailor in frank amazement. "You surely don't imagine he'll drop whatever he is doing and travel a thousand miles just for a trip with you and I?" he at last recovered himself enough to demand.
The captain nodded complacently. "I've sort of got a feelin' that way, an' if I ain't mistaken, them's his pony's hoofs comin' now—someway they sound different from what yours did, though."
Both adventurers rose to their feet and stood eagerly peering into the darkness from which there came the thud of rapidly approaching hoofs.