So they continued to gaze at the still far distant Key through the glasses. Of course they could not have seen any human being, but Ballyhoo, who really possessed remarkable vision, stoutly declared he could trace a thin column of smoke rising above the tree-crowned isle.
The others being unable to locate this sign of Coco Key being inhabited told Ballyhoo that it must be a vein of clouds he saw; but, nevertheless, he stubbornly persisted in sticking to his assertion.
“You wait and see who’s right, that’s all, fellows,” he told them, for Ballyhoo, as we have seen on other occasions, was a very stubborn chap, and ready to “nail his flag to the mast before giving up the ship.”
So they continued to move on at half speed. So low in the water did the submarine lie that no one without the aid of a good glass could, from the Key, have detected its presence amidst the choppy little waves. And presently, after the sun had sunk amidst the gathering clouds, there was no danger of their coming being known.
After they had eaten their supper the boys once more mounted to the upper deck. It was only natural that they should feel an intense interest in this lonely little Key that lay directly in the path of the hurricanes bred amidst the terrible Windward Islands.
“It seems to be covered with vegetation, all right,” Ballyhoo was saying, as if that fact caused him to wonder. “You’d think that long ago the storms that cross this stretch of the old Caribbean would have just wiped out every trace of such a little spot of land.”
“Well, there must be some reason why they haven’t,” Oscar advanced. “It may be a reef that lies to the northeast, and protects Coco Key whenever one of those hurricanes swoop down here. I’ve got an idea, though, that they gather force as they go, and are a whole lot worse hundreds of miles further on, when they strike Cuba, or Jamaica, and then sail over to Galveston.”
Although this was just a guess with Oscar, the probability is the boy struck what might be the exact truth. Later on Captain Shooks told them his experience was all along those lines; and that it took those West Indian hurricanes some time to get going at their full force; so the probability was they did not strike Coco Key as furiously as when days afterwards they were reported going at a hundred and ten miles an hour.
All lights were “doused” so that not by a glimmer would their coming be made known. And, sitting there, always watching ahead, it was not a great while after coming on deck that the boys discovered what seemed to be a far distant gleam.
“What do you suppose it can be?” queried Ballyhoo Jones.