growled Harry. "Take it away, Buck, or I'll throw you overboard."

The high sounding name of the negro was often contracted to Buck by the
Hilltop boys, as in the present instance, but he was used to both, and
answered as readily to one as to the other, now saying with a broad grin:

"Dat am a mistake, Mistah Harry. De worser yo' feel, de mo' yo' should put
in yo' stomach, dat is to say when yo' get good nourishmental food like
dis yer. Of co'se dey is detrimental substances which----"

"That sort of talk will make me sick if nothing else will," said Harry,
hurrying away, while Jack and Dick sat down, and gazed out upon the
horizon, while sipping their bouillon and nibbling at their biscuits.

"We will be in summer seas, as the advertisements call them, before long,"
said Jack. "The air is pleasant enough as it is. Down here in the summer
it is pretty hot I take it, but in April it will be all right."

"Think of us cruising around the Spanish main where the old buccaneers
used to roam," laughed Dick. "Perhaps we will dig up a pot of gold buried
on one of the islands by some of them."

"If Captain Kidd had buried all the gold that folks said he did," replied
Jack, "he would have been kept busy till now. If people would work instead
of trying to find gold that was never buried, they would accomplish
something. The only treasure you dig out of the earth is the good crop you
get by working at your corn and potatoes."

"That's true philosophy, Jack. I have never had to dig anything for
myself, having rich folks who always looked after me. Perhaps it would