“What you fellers doin’?”

The captain soon got stronger, and said he was all right but for a headache which was splitting his skull.  He tried to rise, but fell back in a faint, and Dick told him he must lie still and give orders, which Johnny and he would obey.  Then Dick stood on a thwart and studied the water as far as he could see, hoping to find an oar.  He saw a mast, a hatch cover and some broken fragments from the Etta and at last the blade from the oar which the captain had broken.  Johnny and he paddled with their hands until they recovered the oar blade.  As a light breeze had sprung up from the south, which was causing them to drift northward, they headed south, paddling and watching by turns, until they found the lost oar.  Then Dick, resting the oar in the sculling hole, called on the captain for orders.

“Better strike out due east and make for Nor’-West Cape.  That’s the nearest land and we’re liable to be struck by a squall ’most any minute.  Then there’s a cocoanut grove at the Cape and you’ll be thirsty by the time you get there.”

“Gee!” said Dick, “I’m thirsty now.  Wish you hadn’t spoken of it.”

Dick put his weight on the oar and as he swung back and forth on it the captain called out: 

“You sure can scull, boy, but take it easy; you’ve got over a dozen miles of it to the Cape and near fifty more up the coast, after that.”

“Where do I come in?” said Johnny.

“Go ’way, child, this is man’s work,” replied Dick, as he swung easily on his oar, but with a vim that drove the dingy through the water at good speed.

Johnny begged for his turn, but didn’t get it for two hours, by which time the tops of the cocoa palms could be seen.  Then Captain Tom began to feel better and talked of doing his share of the work, upon which Dick whistled a few bars of “Go ’Way Back and Sit Down,” which the captain seemed to understand, for he gave no more trouble.

It was nearly dark when they landed on a beach at the border of a forest of cocoa palms and in a few minutes Johnny had a dozen young nuts on the ground and was hacking at the tough husk of one with his knife.  When the ape-faced end of the nut had been laid bare and the eye cut out with a pen-knife blade, he gave the nut to Dick, who was soon absorbing the most delicious drink of his life.  There was about a pint of milk in each nut, and it took a round dozen to quench the thirst of the three.  They broke open half-grown or custard nuts and ate their pulpy meat and they tried some of the hard flesh of the mature nut.

The castaways built a fire on the beach for cheer and warmth and piled up fallen leaves of the palm to soften their beds on the sand.  Captain Tom told the boys that the plantation house was not occupied, and that the next house down the coast was a number of miles distant and just opposite to the course they wanted to take.  He then added that he was no more captain now than his companions and would give no orders, but he advised that they start up the coast before sun-up and do a lot of their sculling in the cool of the morning.  The boys collected a couple of dozen of nuts to keep down their thirst and when the sun rose they were several miles up the coast.