With his fork he quickly drew on the tablecloth a sketch of southwestern Florida, outlining the waters northeast of Cape Sable and with little jabs indicating the island area which extends up and down the coast, as well as into Whitewater Bay. Gates was used to doing this kind of thing and he did it well, with the result that we got a very clear idea of what he meant. No one knew the exact number of islands, he said, because they had never been charted. Government surveys had been considered useless, in all probability; and, of private interests, there were none. No boat, except perhaps at rare intervals a very small craft of adventurous spirit, ever tried to enter—but, as to that, twenty small boats might spend a month's playing in that maze and never meet. The mainland, for many miles in all directions, was without habitation, and these conditions had isolated this entire section as completely as though it were in the heart of a South American jungle.
Difficult as it was to believe that on the "Playground Peninsula" of eastern United States an unsurveyed primeval wilderness of perhaps three thousand square miles had remained absolutely detached from inquisitive civilization, I was soon to learn that Gates had not in any way exaggerated. It was there; it is there today in the same unbroken solitude, for any to see who will.
"Why didn't she duck in there and hide last night?" I asked, coming out of the charmed spell his description had cast over me.
"She daren't, sir. Nothing but a dinghy, or the like of that, has ever gone in very far. Leastwise, I don't think so. The islands are just a lot of oyster-shell bars covered with sand and overgrown with red mangrove trees. I've been told the channel between 'em sometimes isn't more'n a foot deep; but in other places there may be good water. What I mean to say is that they're not charted, and I doubt if any man living could find his way through 'em the same way twice. They lay in a bunch stretching about forty miles north and south, and maybe fifteen or twenty through. Some are good sized—we'll say a mile long—but others run down to the size of the Whim. Oh, he wouldn't dare to run in there, sir! Now we might try to tease him close to 'em and crowd him some way, as the professor says—or let him do the other thing!"
"That sounds like some plan," Tommy sprang to his feet. "We'll tease him, all right, if we shoot fast enough!"
"But they must be let to begin that shooting first," Monsieur insisted.
"I'd like to know why?" Tommy turned to him.
"Why? What right have we to come and start such a business?"
"What right have we to crowd her out of the ocean?" Tommy answered with another question. "What right have they to blow us up?—or steal a girl?—or counterfeit our money?—or darn near shoot my finger off and then laugh at me? To hell with rights! We've got more than that scoundrel has, if we haven't any!"
Gates got up with an oath.