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.