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 glasses 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. "Nobody 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 buttermilk 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."