"Bah!" explodes Old Hickory. "Can't you remember back to nineteen, Killam?" Then he turns to me. "So you concocted this plot story for Captain Killam's benefit, did you?"

I nods.

"I thought it would keep him off our heels for a while," says I. "I fed him an earful, I guess."

"Young man," says Mr. Ellins, shakin' a forefinger at me, but lettin'

his left eyelid drop knowin', "the next time I find that imagination of yours running loose I--I'll authorize Captain Killam to catch it and put it in irons. Now let's have luncheon."

CHAPTER XIII

WHEN THE NAVY HORNED IN

One thing about this yacht-cruisin' act is how close a line you get on the people you're shut up with. Why, this cross-mated bunch of ours hadn't been out in the _Agnes_ more'n three days before I could have told you the life hist'ry of 'most everyone in the party.

I knew that the late Mr. Mumford had been a n.o.ble soul who wore full face lambrequins and was fussy about his food. From the picture Mrs.

Mumford showed Vee and me, I judged he must have looked like an upstate banker; but come to get down to cases, she admits he was in the coal and lumber business over in Montclair, New Jersey.

About J. Dudley Simms I dug up all kinds of information. He'd been brought up by an old uncle who'd made a million or so runnin' an ale brewery and who had a merry little dream that he was educatin' J.

Dudley to be a minister. If he'd lasted a couple of years longer, too, it would have been the Rev. J. Dudley Simms for a fact; but when uncle cashed in, Dudley left the divinity school abrupt and forgot ever to go back.

I even discovered that Professor Leonidas Barr, the fish expert and Old Hickory's cribbage partner, had once worked in a shoe store and could still guess the size of a young lady's foot by lookin' at her hands.

But when it came to collectin' any new dope about Captain Killam, he's still Rupert the Mysterious.

Durin' them long days when we went churnin' steady and monotonous down towards the hook end of Florida, with nothin' happenin' but sleep and meals, 'most everybody sort of drifted together and got folksy. Not Rupert, though. He don't forget for a minute that he's conductin' a dark and desperate hunt for pirate gold, and he don't seem contented unless he's workin' at it every hour of the day.

Course, after he's pulled that break of tacklin' J. Dudley for a mutiny plotter, Old Hickory shuts down on his sleuthin' around the decks, so he takes it out in gazin' suspicious at the horizon through a pair of field gla.s.ses he always wears strapped to him. Don't seem to cheer him up any, either, to have me ask him frivolous questions.

"Can you spot any movie shows or hot-dog wagons out there, Cap'n?" I asks.

He just glares peevish and declines to answer.

"What you lookin' for, anyway?" I goes on.

"Nothing I care to discuss with you, I think," says he.

"Bing-g-g," says I. "Right on the wrist!"

And then all of a sudden Mrs. Mumford gets hipped with the idea that Rupert is sort of bein' neglected. Well, trust her. She's been a sunshine worker and a social uplifter all her life. And no sooner does she get sympathizin' with Rupert than she starts plannin' ways of chirkin' him up.

"The poor dear Captain!" she gurgles gushy. "He seems so lonely and sad. Who knows what his past has been, how many dangers he has faced, what ordeals he has been through? If someone could only get him to talk about them, it might help."

"Why not tackle him, then?" says I. "n.o.body could do it better than you."

"Oh, really now!" protests Mrs. Mumford, duckin' her chin kittenish.

"I--I couldn't do it alone. Perhaps, though, if you young people would--"

"Oh, we will; won't we, Torchy?" says Vee.

I nods. Inside of half an hour, too, we had towed Rupert into a corner beside the widow and had him surrounded.

"Tell me, Captain," says Mrs. Mumford impulsive, "have you not led a most romantic life?"

Rupert rolls his eyes at her quick, then steadies 'em down and blinks solemn. Kind of weird, starey eyes, them b.u.t.termilk blue panes of his are.

"I--I don't say much about it, as a rule," says he, droppin' his eyelids modest.

"There!" exclaims Mrs. Mumford. "I just knew it was so. One daring adventure after another, I suppose, with no thought of fear."

"Oh, I've been afraid plenty of times," says Rupert, "but somehow I-- Well, I've gone on."

"Isn't he splendid?" asks Mrs. Mumford, turnin' to us. "Just like a hero in a book! But we would like to know from the very beginning. As a boy, now?"

"There wasn't much," protests Rupert. "You see, I lived in a little town in southern Illinois. Father ran a general store. I had to help in it--sold shingle nails, mola.s.ses, mower teeth, overalls. How I hated that! But there was the creek and the muck pond. I had an old boat. I played smuggler and pirate. I used to love to read pirate books. I wanted to go to sea."

"So you ran away and became a sailor," adds Mrs. Mumford, clappin' her hands enthusiastic.

"I planned to lots of times," says Rupert, "but father made me go through the academy. Then afterwards I had to teach school--in a rough district. Once some big boys tried to throw me into a snowdrift. We had a terrible fight."

"It must have been awful," says Mrs. Mumford. "Those big, brutal boys!

I can just see them. Did--did you kill any of them?"

"I hit one on the nose quite hard," says Rupert. "Then, of course, I had to give up teaching. I meant to start off for sea that winter, but father was taken sick. Lungs, you know. So we sold out the store and bought a place down in Florida, an orange grove. It was on the west coast, near the Gulf.

"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 gla.s.ses again."