pointed toward. 
“I wonder who they are?” Nicky speculated. 
“I guess they wonder that about us,” Tom hinted. 
They were aboard when the other small craft slipped alongside. In the rowboat was a tall, rangy, and very thin and hawk-faced white man and a plumb, grinning darkey of the true southern type, ready to break into a guffaw at the slightest joke; he was quite a contrast to the Jamaican, Sam. Although Sam had a pleasant smile, his face never broke out, as Nicky put it, “like the sun bu’sting through a cloud,” as did that of the darkey whom his white companion called “Pomp’” to shorten his real name, which was Pompey. 

“Howdy, strangers,” greeted the white man as their boat grated and came to rest at the side of the sloop. “Right pretty name your boat’s got—_Treasure Belle_. Reckon maybe you named her that a-purpose. Reckon maybe you come here-’bouts to make her live up to hit!” 
“Come aboard, won’t you?” Mr. Neale responded. “We’re glad to have company and get acquainted.” The white man clambered to the cockpit and produced a corncob pipe, filling it languidly as he lay sprawled on a long cushion at the side of the engine. 
“I’m Nelse Carford,” he explained and introductions were exchanged. “I got me a right nice little piece of ground up beyond the point. You-all mus’ come to visit me. Here for the night—or on special business?” It struck Nicky and his comrades that he eyed them all closely as he asked the question. 
“Thank you—we would be glad to visit you soon, if we remain.” Mr. Neale took it upon himself to be the spokesman. “We are just sailing around among the bays and the keys, giving the boys a bit of fun—an epidemic of ‘flu’ closed their school this December.”
“I see,” nodded Nelse, apparently better pleased than before. “I thought it mought—” his word for “might”—“mought be you was after some treasure, seeing what the craft is named.” 
Nicky opened his mouth, but Cliff kicked his shin gently and Nicky subsided. But Nelse had caught his expression. 
“I reckon it mought be your aim to git some if it was right handy though, hey?” he grinned. Pompey, in the rowboat, holding to a rail alongside the cockpit, guffawed, “Sho’ nuff!” he chuckled. “White boys sho’ nuff do dat!” 
“Would you blame us?” Cliff demanded with a grin. 
“’Course not,” Nelse answered. “Hits right natural. And you’re ’most what mought be said to be in the pirates’ an’ wreckers’ haunts, too. Not fur away to what they call Black Caesar’s Creek—they do say that old pirate was a terror. An’ all around—just beyond, is a regular ships’ graveyard—why you kin right near see ribs and rudder posts, an’ bits of keel sticking up, from here. Not quite, but you near-’bout kin see ’em. They’s just away yonder.” He gestured in the 

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