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 

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