The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf Part 1

The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf.

by Captain Quincy Allen.

CHAPTER I

UNDER SEALED ORDERS

"Now KEEP your word, Frank, and tell us the news!"

"Yes, you got us to come to your house tonight under a promise, remember.

What wonderful thing has happened to make you look so tickled?"

"Talk to me about the Sphinx! Frank has the old relic beaten to a frazzle!"

Three boys gathered eagerly around the fourth as they bombarded him after this fashion. Frank Langdon looked at the faces of his chums and laughed again.

"Well, it would be a shame to keep you squirming on the anxious seat any longer, boys, and I'm going to take you into my confidence just as fast as I can. Sit down and hold your oars. Jerry, pull that stool up; Will, the settee must do for you and Bluff. Now, are you ready?" he asked, tantalizingly.

"Crazy to hear!" was the characteristic reply of Bluff, otherwise Richard Masters, son of Centerville's greatest lawyer.

"Tell me about that, will you?" exclaimed Jerry Wallington.

"Please go on before we explode!" begged Will Milton.

"These things always have a beginning, you know. This one happens to be founded on the fact that we are close to our annual Christmas vacation, and that this year it happens that we're going to enjoy two full weeks--you know that?" said Frank.

"Of course we do, thanks to that steam-heater getting out of order. But don't rehash old stuff. That's history by now. What we want is the meat in the cocoanut. Please hit for the bull's-eye, first chop," pleaded Will.

"I was wondering what we would do with ourselves during that time.

There's old Jesse Wilc.o.x, the trapper, who invited us up to spend a week with him and see how he runs out his string of traps in cold weather, catching muskrats, mink, 'c.o.o.ns, foxes and all such things in more or less abundance. We had about decided that we would accept, and I was even getting ready to go when something happened."

"Talk to me about your tantalizing chaps, did you ever meet up with one as bad as Frank can be when he knows the rest of us are so keen to hear?"

cried Jerry.

"What was it?" demanded Bluff.

"I had a letter that changed my mind," replied Frank.

"Not from old Jesse?"

"Well, hardly, for I don't believe the old fellow can write. This was from one of my cousins, a fellow several years older than myself. You met him about a year ago when he stopped with us a few days."

"You must mean Archie Dunn," said Will.

"Go up head, Will. Archie it was. I was glad enough to get a letter from him, but when I read what he had to propose I thought I should have a fit."

"Just as we will, unless you hurry your yarn," growled Jerry, moving uneasily.

"Well, Archie wrote that he had laid out a plan for his amus.e.m.e.nt this winter. You know he is independent, having come into quite a snug fortune. He is as fond of outdoor life as any member of this club, and, having a tutor to accompany him, is able to do lots of splendid stunts that less fortunate chaps can only dream about."

"The lucky dog!" commented Bluff, enviously.

"It seems that this year he was about to carry out a long-cherished plan of his. He purchased a beautiful little motor-boat, about twenty-seven feet long, and carrying a twelve horse-power engine. He says she can make twelve miles an hour if pushed, but being beamy she is as steady as a church floor and mighty comfortable; just the kind of a craft for cruising along a river or the bays of a coast."

Jerry groaned.

"You're killing me by inches! To tell us all this and then ask us to settle on going up there into the woods for a two-weeks' spin! It's a crime, that's what!" he exclaimed.

"Wait!" said Frank, mysteriously; and the others immediately drew a bit closer, almost holding their very breath with eagerness and antic.i.p.ation.

"He had this boat taken to a Southern town on the railroad, where a navigable river flows through Northern Florida into the Gulf. Here he also shipped all his provisions, intending to make a start just before Christmas, when the unexpected happened. He had an accident--broke through the ice when skating, came near being drowned, and has been laid up with pneumonia ever since!"

"Poor chap! That's awful!" declared Bluff.

"But that isn't the worst by any means, from our standpoint, boys. His doctor has strictly forbidden him to take that voyage this winter and is sending him off with his tutor to some baths in Southern Europe or some old place where he may recover his strength."

The three boys groaned in concert.

"A rough deal all around," said Jerry.

"What a disappointment it must have been, and he with his heart set on the trip!" exclaimed Will.

"But they tell us that 'it's a poor wind that blows n.o.body good.' So he has written me this letter, making a proposal," went on Frank, calmly.

"What!" shouted Jerry, clutching the arm of his chum.

"Oh! he hates to leave his fine, dandy little launch there at that town, where there is really no accommodation for her, and would like to have some one take her over the course to Cedar Keys, Florida, to put her up with a boat builder he knows. And so he wrote to me," continued Frank.

"Do you mean he has asked you to go down there and take that boat, just as he intended doing?" gasped Bluff.

"Yes, only that instead of taking two months loitering along I could do the job in ten days, perhaps," was the answer.

"Oh! what a lucky dog you are," sighed Will; "think of the innumerable chances for taking magnificent snapshots along the way."

"Hold on. I didn't tell you that in his letter he says particularly, 'you and those bully good chums of yours, the whole three--plenty of sleeping accommodations for the lot aboard!'" cried Frank, with a smile.

Then there _was_ a scene! Jerry gripped Bluff, and gave him a hug a bear might have envied, while Will was shaking Frank's hand as though it were a pump handle.

"Glorious!"

"The finest ever!"

"It beats the Dutch how Frank runs into snaps!"

This last, of course, from Jerry, who was taking his turn now at squeezing the hand of his chum.