CROCODILE KEY
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.