“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.”

“Oh, I’ve been afraid plenty of times,” says Rupert, “but somehow I—­ Well, I’ve gone on.”

“Isn’t he splendid?” asks Mrs. Mumford, turnin’ to us.  “Just like a hero in a book!  But we would like to know from the very beginning.  As a boy, now?”

“There wasn’t much,” protests Rupert.  “You see, I lived in a little town in southern Illinois.  Father ran a general store.  I had to help in it—­sold shingle nails, molasses, mower teeth, overalls.  How I hated that!  But there was the creek and the muck pond.  I had an old boat.  I played smuggler and pirate.  I used to love to read pirate books.  I wanted to go to sea.”

“So you ran away and became a sailor,” adds Mrs. Mumford, clappin’ her hands enthusiastic.

“I planned to lots of times,” says Rupert, “but father made me go through the academy.  Then afterwards I had to teach school—­in a rough district.  Once some big boys tried to throw me into a snowdrift.  We had a terrible fight.”

“It must have been awful,” says Mrs. Mumford.  “Those big, brutal boys!  I can just see them.  Did—­did you kill any of them?”

“I hit one on the nose quite hard,” says Rupert.  “Then, of course, I had to give up teaching.  I meant to start off for sea that winter, but father was taken sick.  Lungs, you know.  So we sold out the store and bought a place down in Florida, an orange grove.  It was on the west coast, near the Gulf.

“That’s where I learned to sail.  And after father died I took my share of what he left us and bought a cruising boat.  I didn’t like working on the grove—­messing around with smelly fertilizer, sawing off dead limbs, doing all that silly spraying.  And my brother Jim could do it so much better.  So I fished and took out winter tourists on excursions:  things like that.  Summers I’d go cruising down the coast.  I would be gone for weeks at a time.  I’ve been out in some fearful storms, too.

“I got to know a lot of strange characters who live on those west coast keys.  They’re bad, some of them—­kill you for a few dollars.  Others are real friendly, like the old fellow who told me about the buried treasure.  He was almost dead of fever when I found him in his little palmetto shack.  I got medicine for him, stayed until he was well.  That’s why he told me about the gold.”