nd it was supper-time. I had suspected it when I came out
of the hat-shop. The sea-trip and fine air here had given us tremendous
appetites, which our walk had sharpened.

So we turned back at once and hurried home, agreeing to begin square on
the fort the next day.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Sea-beans are seeds of a West Indian tree. They are of different
colors, very hard, and capable of being handsomely polished. They are
called "sea-beans" because great numbers of them drift up on the Florida
and adjacent coasts.

CHAPTER IV.

TO THE RESCUE.

The next morning, I was awakened by Rectus coming into the room.

"Hello!" said I; "where have you been? I didn't hear you get up."

"I called you once or twice," said Rectus, "but you were sleeping so
soundly I thought I'd let you alone. I knew you'd lost some sleep by
being sick on the steamer."

"That was only the first night," I exclaimed. "I've made up that long
ago. But what got you up so early?"

"I went out to take a warm salt-water bath before breakfast," answered
Rectus. "There's an eight-cornered bath-house right out here, almost
under the window, where you can have your sea-water warm if you like
it."

"Do they pump it from the tropics?" I asked, as I got up and began to
dress.

"No; they heat it in the bath-house. I had a first-rate bath, and I saw
a Minorcan."

"You don't say so!" I cried. "What was he like? Had he horns? And how
did you know what he was?"

"I asked him," said Rectus.

"Asked him!" I exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that you got up early
and went around asking people if they were Mohicans!"

"Minorcans, I said."

"Well, it's bad enough, even if you got the name right. Did you ask the
man plump to his face?"

"Yes. But he first asked me what I was. He was an oldish man, and I met
him just as I was coming out of the bath-house. He had a basket of clams
on his arm, and I asked him where he caught them. That made him laugh,
and he said he dug them out of the sand under the wharf. Then he asked
me if my name was Cisneros, and when I told him it was not, he said that
I looked like a Spaniard, and he thought that that might be my name. And
so, as he had asked me about myself, I asked him if he was a Minorcan,
and he said 'yes.'"

"And what then?" I asked.

"Nothing," said Rectus. "He went on with his clams, and I came home."

"You didn't seem to make much out of him, after all," said I. "I don't
wonder he thought you were a S