would not be sitting on a post
and fishing if his wife was dead.

I threw the pole and line away, and then Rectus and I walked up to the
hotel. We forgot all about Celia, who was left to go home when she
chose.

It was some hours before we saw the Chippertons, and then we were called
into their room, where there was a talking and a telling things, such as
I never heard before.

It was some time before I could get Mr. and Mrs. Chipperton's story
straight, but this was about the amount of it: They were picked up
sooner than we were--just after day-break. When they left the ship, they
rowed as hard as they could, for several hours, and so got a good
distance from us. It was well they met with a vessel as soon as they
did, for all the women who had been on the steamer were in this boat,
and they had a hard time of it. The water dashed over them very often,
and Mr. Chipperton thought that some of them could not have held out
much longer (I wondered what they would have done on our raft).

The vessel that picked them up was a coasting schooner bound to one of
the Florida Keys, and she wouldn't put back with them, for she was under
some sort of a contract, and kept right straight on her way. When they
got down there, they chartered a vessel which brought them up to
Fernandina, where they took the steamer for Savannah. They were on the
very steamer we passed in the inside passage. If we had only known that!

They telegraphed the moment they reached Fernandina, and proposed
stopping at St. Augustine, but it was thought they could make better
time by keeping right on to Fernandina. The telegram reached Savannah
after we had left on the tug.

Mr. Chipperton said he got his fancy clothes on board the schooner. He
bought them of a man--a passenger, I believe--who had an extra suit.

"I think," said Mr. Chipperton, "he was the only man on that mean little
vessel who had two suits of clothes. I don't know whether these were his
weekday or his Sunday clothes. As for my own, they were so wet that I
took them off the moment I got on board the schooner, and I never saw
them again. I don't know what became of them, and, to tell the truth, I
haven't thought of 'em. I was too glad to get started for Savannah,
where I knew we'd meet Corny, if she was alive. You see, I trusted in
you boys."

Just here, Mrs. Chipperton kissed us both again. This made several times
that she had done it. We didn't care so much, as there was no one there