e were to be no more
scrapes of that sort, which generally came to nothing, after all.

For the next two or three days we roved around the old town, and into
two or three orange-groves, and went out sailing with Mr. Cholott, who
owned a nice little yacht, or sail-boat, as we should call it up north.

The sailing here is just splendid, and, one morning, we thought we'd
hire a boat for ourselves and go out fishing somewhere. So we went down
to the yacht-club wharf to see about the boat that belonged to old
Menendez--Rectus's Minorcan. There were lots of sail-boats there as well
as row-boats, but we hunted up the craft we were after, and, by good
luck, found Menendez in her, bailing her out.

So we engaged her, and he said he'd take us over to the North Beach to
fish for bass. That suited us,--any beach and any kind of
fish,--provided he'd hurry up and get his boat ready. While he was
scooping away, and we were standing on the wharf watching him, along
came Crowded Owl, the young Indian we had always liked--that is, ever
since we had known any of them. He came up, said "How?" and shook hands,
and then pulled out some sea-beans. The sight of these things seemed to
make me sick, and as for Rectus, he sung out:

"Do' wan' 'em!" so suddenly that it seemed like one word, and a pretty
savage one at that.

Crowded Owl looked at me, but I shook my head, and said, "No, no, no!"
Then he drew himself up and just stood there. He seemed struck dumb; but
that didn't matter, as he couldn't talk to us, anyway. But he didn't go
away. When we walked farther up the wharf, he followed us, and again
offered us some beans. I began to get angry, and said "No!" pretty
violently. At this, he left us, but as we turned at the end of the
wharf, we saw him near the club-house, standing and talking with
Maiden's Heart.

"I think it's a shame to let those Indians wander about here in that
way," said Rectus. "They ought to be kept within bounds."

I couldn't help laughing at this change of tune, but said that I
supposed only a few of them got leave of absence at a time.

"Well," said Rectus, "there are some of them that ought never to come
out."

"Hello!" said old Menendez, sticking his head up above the edge of the
wharf. "We're ready now. Git aboard."

And so we scrambled down into the sail-boat, and Menendez pushed off,
while the two Indians stood and watched us as we slowly moved away.

When we got fairly out, our sail filled, and we wen