  Like a jackrabbit, Sam, in two moves, dived into the cabin. His first jump took him from the deck to the cockpit; his body hardly landed, facing astern, before he doubled on himself, snakelike, and shot himself through the narrow door. Tom was on the point of following; but his fear of his comrades’ laughter was greater even than his dread of the unknown. Sam’s comical appearance brought a shout of laughter from Cliff and Nicky; even Mr. Neale was compelled to chuckle. Tom, therefore, mastered his impulse and remained on the cabin roof. “Now what do you suppose that was?” Cliff wondered, after they relieved the tension of the momentary start of instinctive terror by a good laugh at Sam. “I must give it up,” answered Mr. Neale, “but I am inclined to look for some human agency before I admit any supernatural cause.” “It—it didn’t sound like—anything human!” Tom said with a shiver. “Have you heard so many ghosts that you know what they sound like?” asked Nicky with a chuckle. Tom shook his head. “I don’t feel much like investigating in the dark,” Cliff went on. “I don’t see what there is to investigate,” Nicky added. “I’ll take the dinghy in the morning and look for some evidences of human causes,” declared Mr. Neale. “Perhaps a Seminole Indian may be around here, fishing—or something. Or some white resident of the mainland, with a sense of humor, is playing a joke on us.” “This message doesn’t seem like a joke,” Nicky defended. “It looks real to me. See how rusted the old can is—why, it’s almost like paper—and the parchment is awfully old.” He indicated, by the dim lantern, how frail the edge of the sheet was by tearing it. “I think it’s real,” Cliff agreed. “Don’t you, Mr. Neale?” Their captain and mentor hesitated. “There are several strange points to consider by daylight,” he commented. “If we had found it by chance I should consider it genuine; but the light—and the ghostly voice—those make me suspicious.” “But—look!” argued Nicky, “it gives a definite place, and tells about a landmark to show where to dig for treasure. Our map wasn’t even clear about the channel or where the treasure was hidden.” “However,” Mr. Neale said, “it came to you in a logical way. The new one did not. I cannot account for that bluish light but it is surely not supernatural.” “I’ve heard of very old things, decomposing, giving off light,” Cliff declared. Mr. Neale nodded and since there was really nothing to be gained by any long argument, they finally became calm enough to lie down again, Mr. Neale agreeing to stay awake and watch until dawn. Not much sleep was possible; nevertheless they all dozed some, and their dreams were, to say the least, thrilling. However, as is usual with any form of terror of supernatural things, the coming of the sunshine dispelled their timidity. True it was that the coral showed no footprints and the water told no story of the previous night’s incidents. They remained unexplainable. Sam served a breakfast of fish, with bacon and some turtle eggs he had found the evening before, and during the meal their procedure was discussed. Nicky, Cliff and Tom were for giving up their indefinite search, among a multitude of islets, and trying for the new treasure trove, and Sam agreed with them with the words, “Anywhere, sar—anywhere but hereabouts! It’s bad lucky, so it is!” Mr. Neale, outvoted, gave in. “I hunted crocodiles for the Museum of Natural History one winter,” he stated, “I did not secure a really successful specimen—all I got was a giant turtle head, and part of the skeleton of some great snake; the crocodiles were too shy to be caught or even shot.” “Don’t you mean alligators?” asked Tom, who knew some natural history. “No,” replied Mr. Neale. “Mostly the saurians of Florida are of the alligator family; but in some southerly parts of the Florida bays there are to be found certain species that are different from the alligators and more closely allied with the crocodile species. I really believe it would do us no harm to delay our search here for a while. There is delightful fishing and a great deal of fun—good bathing, sponge fishing, crawfish catching and so on—to be had. “Card Bay,” he went on, “is a curious slip in the parchment; it is really Card Sound—a sheet of water about six miles by two and a half. But possibly when this parchment was put where we found it—if it is genuine—the names were different.” Up came the anchor and instead of running into Whitewater Bay to go up the channel—if they could find one—inside the islets, they swung the Treasure Belle’s bow southward, and ran slowly down to round the land of the nose named Cape Sable, and then beat easterly along the coast, finding snug harbors behind keys or in some of the many small bays, to lie to during the nights. The trip was fairly uneventful. There was one time when they thought they would not find the right channel and almost went aground in a narrow passage between two mangrove-covered points. Rather heavy wind made steering hard as they rounded Southeast Cape, the lowest part of the Florida mainland, even before that; but Sam was a good man at the tiller and they had little to fear, being quick and alert to obey his quiet commands to haul on the ropes, to swing the mainsail or to take an additional reef in their canvas. They skirted the shore of lower Matecumbe, and stared interestedly at Indian Key. “That is where the Seminole Indians killed a Doctor Perrine,” Mr. Neale explained. “During the Seminole War that happened. His children hid in a turtle pen. They escaped. Really, it was a miracle!” It was a high island of about ten acres, and in the plentiful water around it they ran quite close to its high banks in passing. That evening they anchored after running between two points where the draught was very slight and only by judging the color of the water were they able to starboard, or port, the helm a trifle, moving slowly, to avoid the shoal or the more dangerous coral itself. They anchored just before sunset and so beautifully clear was the water that the sponges growing on the bottom were plainly visible, in the cross light, as Tom and Nicky rowed the glass bottomed dinghy slowly around on the smooth water. “Isn’t this great” exclaimed Nicky. “See those sponges! How many kinds do you know, Tom?” “Well, I know them by name, but not by sight,” Tom responded. “I have read that the marketable kinds are the yellow, the sheeps-wool, the gras—and I think one is called the glove. But there are more kinds that aren’t any good to sell, and they have to be recognized or else you’d get a lot that aren’t salable. There is the loggerhead, for one, I remember—and the potato sponge. And there are some that are spiny, and they hurt your hands if you grab them.” “They don’t look like what we see in the stores,” Nicky commented. “They are sort of the same shapes, but they are black, and Mr. Neale says they feel like india-rubber to touch and they are smooth, with little craters or holes in the top—look! There’s a beauty. Is that a salable one, Tom?” Tom peered down through the boat’s transparent bottom. “I’ll bet it’s a sheeps-wool one,” he declared. Nicky stood up and began to fling off his clothes. “I’m going to dive for it!” he exclaimed. Tom, fired by his enthusiasm, and with the spirit of rivalry, began to “shuck” his clothes. It became a race toward nakedness—with no one but their comrades to observe, they often plunged into the limpid, translucent water in nature’s swimming suit. Cliff, observing them from the sloop, began to emulate their hasty disrobing. But Sam put a stop to their plan. “Why?” demanded Cliff, rather warmly. “We’re not afraid of sharks!” “No, sar,” called Sam, “but you are liable to dive crooked or if your foot slips you may go in backwards—and a cut from that sharp coral isn’t to be chanced, sar.” He showed Cliff a deep scar under his wooly hair, and Cliff, alarmed, called for his comrades to desist—until daylight, at least. They agreed reluctantly, and, looking down more carefully Nicky confided to Tom that he was glad they had. Overlooked in their excitement, they were able in calm study to observe a long, arrow-like frond of coral extending upward at an angle so close to the sponge that it must have been struck by any but a most expert diver. Green turtle, cooked by broiling beside a good beach fire, as the Indians did it—a tasty meat, and equally good when made into a sort of stew of the whole creature’s flesh, was eked out by a four pound crawfish caught by Nicky from a veritable crawling mass of these lobster-like shellfish in their bay. Corn-pone, or cornbread made the southern way and baked in ashes, a process learned by Tom during a summer camp, in the South, made a fine dinner that night and they ate the more lustily for the realization of their narrow escape earlier in the evening. “It doesn’t pay to leap before you look!” declared Nicky as the chums settled down to sleep that night. After rather eventless days, during which they passed many bays, inlets, keys and reefs, they sighted Key Largo, one of the most fertile of the few larger Florida Keys, beat along its shore, ran along past Whaleback Key, and finally slipped to the end of what the natives call Barnes’ Sound, and through Jewfish Creek, a narrow and deceptive passage connecting the larger sheet of water with what the natives call Little Card Sound, although the Geodetic Survey charts give different names to both major and minor waters. The opening of Jewfish Creek was deceptive because mangrove trees grew so closely that it looked like an impassable place until Mr. Neale, who had used it previously during his crocodile hunting expedition, took command and piloted them through cleverly. “Little Card Sound!” exclaimed Nicky—with considerable eagerness. “Now—where is Crocodile Key?” “I never heard of it,” Mr. Neale replied. “But——” “Yonder—yonder!” cried Sam, extending his arm toward a point on the distant shoreline. “That may not be a key, sar—but there shorely are three trees in a row!” “So they are!” agreed the captain, jamming over the tiller as the sloop heeled in the breeze and swung her bow toward the trees. “But they are on the shore—not on a key,” objected Tom. “Coral may have closed a channel during the years,” Mr. Neale explained. “Then earth covered it. That is, granting that our message is genuine.” “The trees prove it!” Nicky cried. “Now, all we have to do is to wait till tomorrow and then——” “Dig for treasure!” cried Tom and Cliff, together. |
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