The others were all in favour, although Perry couldn’t quite smother a sigh of regret for the cash in hand he had dreamed of, and there followed an enthusiastic discussion of plans for next Summer, and Bert Alley echoed the sentiment of all when he remarked regretfully that next Summer was an awfully long way off!  Ossie made the suggestion that it might be a good plan to reimburse the members from the salvage money for what sums they had expended on the present cruise, explaining, however, that he wasn’t particular on his own account.  The question was argued and finally decided in the negative.  As Phil put it, what they had spent would have been spent in any case, whether they had gone on the cruise or stayed at home, and they had all received full value for their contributions.  Still planning, they went back to the boats and spent the rest of the afternoon in cleaning them up inside and out, for both the Adventurer and the Follow Me had been sadly neglected for the past forty-eight hours.

Being persons of wealth, they supped ashore and went to a moving picture show, and afterwards, since no one had had his full allowance of sleep for the past two nights, “hit the hay,” in Perry’s phraseology, in short order and slept like so many logs until sun-up.

“I wish,” remarked Han at breakfast the next morning, “that we were just starting out instead of going home.”

“Me too,” agreed Perry.  “It’ll be all over in two or three days, and I’ll have to go back to school again.  I suppose,” he added sadly, “I shan’t see any of you fellows again until next Summer; no one but Ossie, that is.”

“You don’t have to look at me if you don’t want to,” said Ossie, reaching backward into the galley for the coffee-pot.  “I’m not particular.”

“You’ll see us before Summer,” replied Steve.  “I’ve been thinking.”

“So that’s it,” murmured Joe.  “I thought maybe you just—­um—­hadn’t slept well.”

“If we’re going to keep the Club together,” continued Steve, treating the interruption disdainfully, “we’ve got to keep in touch with each other.  Suppose now we have a meeting about Christmas time, during vacation.”

“Good scheme!” applauded Phil.

“I think so.  My idea is to keep out about thirty dollars of that money, or take it out later, I suppose, and have a feed somewhere, a sort of Annual Banquet of the Adventure Club of America, not Incorporated.  We could hold a business meeting first and then feed our faces and talk over this Summer’s fun and have a jolly old time.  What do you say!  Pass the sugar, Han.”

[Illustration:  “They offer you—­” Mr. Hyatt leaned forward in the protesting chair]

They said many things, but they were all in praise of the idea, and later the Follow Me’s contingent was quite as enthusiastic, and Steve, in his official capacity of Number One, finally found a calendar and solemnly announced that Saturday, the twenty-third day of December, was the date, that the hour was six o’clock, post meredian, and that the place would be decided on later.  After which they all went ashore and passed the time until dinner in various ways.  And at a little before two Steve, Joe and Wink once more climbed the narrow stairway to Lawyer Hyatt’s office.