This paper was also signed by Norton, Captain Vinton, and Lieutenant Driscoll, as testifying their belief in its veracity.  The captain of the Petrel undertook to deliver it to the proper authorities, and it was eventually accepted in lieu of Hugh’s personal testimony.

Having attended to these matters, the crew of the Arrow went aboard about noon.  The day was perfect for the return voyage, a fair breeze blew against her weather-stained sails, and the ocean was as blue as sapphire.

The entire party was glad to be on the sloop’s clean decks once more; even Dave seemed happy and relieved when Durgan’s Cove and its outlying shores faded into a velvety green blur along the horizon.  So they left the scene of their adventures, and glided swiftly away “on the home stretch,” as Chester called it, under cloudless skies.

CHAPTER XI

ABOARD THE “ARROW”

It was not until the second day of the voyage back toward Santario that Hugh felt quite himself again.  The nervous strain of his experiences as a captive would have been enough to exhaust him, and in addition he had suffered real buffeting and hardship at the hands of his captors.

Dave stretched a hammock for him on deck at the captain’s orders, and there Hugh spent nearly the entire first day of the homeward trip.

The other boys and Norton diverted his few waking hours with stories and riddles and simple games, and Captain Vinton, himself, contributed more than one tale from his store of recollections.

“Tell you what, boys,” the old captain said as he concluded one of his yarns, “we fellers these days meet with a few excitin’ experiences now and then, but to get some idea of what lively times on the water may be, go back to John Paul Jones and his day, or even to the sea fights of ’62.”

“Have you read much of the history of those days, captain?” inquired Roy Norton interestedly, while the boys leaned forward to hear the reply.

“Son,” said Captain Vinton in answer, turning to Alec Sands, his blue eyes alight with a keen expression, “Son, go to my cabin and bring me an old, worn book from the shelf there:  ’Famous American Naval Commanders,’ it is called.”

Until Alec’s return, the captain looked out over the water with far-seeing eyes, and the others, watching him, wondered what stirring scenes his imagination was picturing to him just then.

He glanced up as Alec handed him the volume of naval history and grasped it with the firm gentleness of a true book lover.  He turned it over thoughtfully, straightened its sagging covers, opened and closed it several times, and finally spoke: 

“Thar’s the answer to yer question, Norton,” he said.  “And that’s only one of about a dozen hist’ries I’ve got on my old shelf.  When times is dull or I’m waitin’ fer a party who’ve gone into the Everglades, or when the Arrow is lyin’ off shore in a dead calm, then I start in at the first page of the book that happens ter be on the end of the shelf, and I live over the old days of the privateers, when it meant somethin’ to sail the seas.”