“Listen Phil,” cried Steve, eagerly, “Don’t kid us, old boy. You couldn’t pull off a stunt like that and live to tell the tale. It just isn’t being done.”
“The sharks were dead ones,” suggested Tom, skeptically.
“I wish they had been,” Phil returned. “I’d have been saved a lot of bother. Tying myself up in that slimy wet seaweed wasn’t exactly my idea of fun.”
“Seaweed,” repeated Tom while the boys looked more and more mystified. “What do you mean—seaweed?”
Then Phil quickly sketched for them that nightmare journey across the shark-infested lagoon. They drank in his words eagerly, living over with him every moment of that hideous experience.
When he had finished they stared at him with eyes in which there was admiration and a new respect. Bimbo, who, all during the recital, had been edging nearer his idol, now crouched beside him, looking up into Phil’s face adoringly, even while he shook with fright.
“Seaweed,” muttered Jack Benton. “Now who, but you, would have thought of that, Phil? It’s a clever idea, all right.”
“It was a lucky one,” said Phil. “It sure had those maneaters guessing, all right. But now,” he added, going back to the danger which menaced them in the shape of Ramirez and his men, “we’ve got to get busy and hide the treasure. From what I saw last night, that gang of his won’t be held off much longer. For all I know they may attack this morning.”
“At any rate, we’ll have to be prepared for them,” agreed Jack Benton, rising as he spoke. “As you say, the first thing is to dispose of the treasure.”
So in the ghostly first light of the early dawn, the boys filed out of the cave armed with pickaxe and shovel, determined to put the boxes with their precious contents safely out of harm’s way.