Professor Barr is right on hand, too; and Dudley tries it just to kill time.  We did have more or less luck, and got quite excited.  Vee pulls in something all striped up like a hat-band, and one that I hooked blew himself up into a reg’lar football after I landed him in the bottom of the boat.  The Professor had jaw-breakin’ names for everything we caught, but he couldn’t say whether they was good to eat or not.  The yacht cook wouldn’t take a chance on any of them.  It was good sport, though, and we all collected a fresh coat of sunburn.  And say, with them new tints in her cheeks, maybe Vee ain’t some ornamental.  But then, she’s easy to look at anyway.

It was this same evenin’, the second we’d been anchored quiet in behind this lengthy island, that the big three of our expedition gets together again.  First I knew, I saw ’em grouped along the side where the companionway stairs was swung—­Auntie, Old Hickory, and Captain Killam.  Rupert seems to be explainin’ something.  Then in a minute or two the men begin easin’ Auntie down into one of the launches tied to the boat boom, and the next I see them go chuggin’ off into the moonlight.  I hunts up Vee and passes her the word.

“What do you know about that?” says I.  “Pikin’ off for a joy ride all by their three-somes!”

“I suppose Captain Killam has found where his treasure island is,” says Vee, “and is going to put it on exhibition.  You know, he was out by himself ever so long to-day.”

“He ought to be able to pick out something likely from among all of these,” says I.  “Islands is what this country seems to be long on.  And they got a spiffy night for it, ain’t they?”

“I think Auntie might have taken us along,” says Vee, a bit pouty.

“We’re no treasure hunters,” I reminds her.  “We’re just to help out the pleasure-cruisin’ bluff.  Who there is to put it over on I don’t quite catch, though.  Ain’t there any population in this part of the map?”

Vee thinks she can see a light ’way up the shore on Sanibel and another off towards the mainland; but the fact remains that here’s a whole lot of perfectly good moonlight goin’ to waste.

“If one of the iron steamboats could only wander down here with a Coney Island mob aboard,” says I, “wouldn’t they just eat this up?  Think of ‘em dancin’ on the decks and—­ Say, what’s the matter with our startin’ a little something like that?”

“Let’s!” says Vee.

So we had a deck steward lug the music machine up out of the cabin, set J. Dudley to work puttin’ on dance records, and, with Mrs. Mumford and the Professor and half the crew for a gallery, we gave an exhibition spiel for an hour or so.  I hope they got as much fun out of it as we did.  Anyway, it tapped the long, long ago for Mrs. Mumford.  I heard her turnin’ on the sob spigot for the Professor.

“Poor, dear Mr. Mumford!” she sighs.  “How he did love dancing with me.  And how wonderfully he could polka!”