“Well, hoys, you shall have your chance.  It may prove a good lesson to you.”

“You heard that, Captain?  Dick and I are boss for three days, and we want this boat to start up Broad River immejit!”

“Tide’s jist a-bilin’ out of the river.  It’ll take all day to get anywhere.  Hadn’t you better anchor at the mouth of the river till it turns?  We can run up the river in the night, so you won’t lose any time.”

The Irene’s anchor was dropped behind the bar that lies opposite the mouth of the river, and Molly and the boys went out in the skiff to call on a family of pelicans which were keeping house on a little coral key, surrounded by oyster reefs, between Rodgers and Broad rivers.  As the skiff neared the key the old birds flew lazily away and lit on a mud-flat a hundred yards distant, but the pelican children waddled around on the oyster reef without showing much alarm until Dick caught one, when the indignant bird struck him with its big bill and punched holes in his hat.  As the tide fell the oyster bars were uncovered, the water shoaled on the mud-flats, and the boys gathered oysters from one, and clams weighing from half a pound to four pounds each from the other.

[Illustration:  “THE INDIGNANT BIRD PUNCHED HOLES THROUGH HIS HAT”]

A fire was built on the reef, bread and coffee brought from the Irene, and Mr. Barstow and Captain Hull invited to a picnic supper which they were polite enough to say they enjoyed greatly.  After supper Molly and the boys took a walk on the beach on the north side of Rodgers River and amused themselves by chasing the crabs that were skurrying along close to the shore to keep out of the way of their enemies.  They had a lot of fun, but caught no crabs, until Dick went back to the Irene for a scoop-net and a bucket, which he soon filled with the crustaceans.  Molly had never before seen shell-fish growing on trees, so Dick cut a few oyster-bearing branches from a mangrove tree and roasted bunches of the bivalves on the beach.  When the sputtering of the oysters on the branch told Dick they were cooked, he hauled the limb from the coals, sat down with his companion on the beach, and with sharpened sticks the young people picked the roasted oysters from their shells, while Dick told the girl of that other picnic on the coast near-by after the waterspout had wrecked the Etta.  They talked after the oysters were eaten and the fire had gone out, until Ned’s voice came to them: 

“Do you kids expect to settle here and grow up with the country?  Don’t you know it’s ’most night, the tide’s been right for the river for an hour, and everybody is waiting for you?”

When they reached the Irene, Mr. Barstow proposed putting off their start until morning to give Molly and him a chance to see the river as they sailed up it.  Mr. Barstow replied to a quizzical look from his son: 

“Of course, this doesn’t come out of your time, Ned.  You are to have your full three days.”