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 

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