"No, that's a fact," agreed Billy ruefully; "I've tried to, but it's no good."
"Well, you ought to be 'a man of independent fortune' now, as the papers say," cried Harry.
"You mean with the percentage I got of the recovered ivory?"
The others nodded.
"I always felt I didn't really deserve that money," urged Billy. "You fellows did most of the work in Africa, I just trailed along."
"Oh, get out, Billy Barnes!" cried Frank. "You did as much as any of us in overreaching old Barr."
"Go ahead and tell us about this story of yours," demanded Harry.
"Well, it sounds like a weird dream and perhaps you fellows will laugh at me for taking it seriously, but a few days ago an old fellow in a tattered blue suit called at the Planet offices and said he wanted to see the city editor. Of course nobody ever does see the city editor, so I was sent out to ascertain what the visitor wanted. I saw at once he had been a seafaring man. He told me his name was Bill Hendricks, known better as Bluewater Bill. He beat about the bush a good while before he would tell me what he was after, and finally he unfolded the wildest tale about buried treasure you ever heard—that is, I don't mean buried treasure—floating would be a better word to describe it. He told me that he had been one of the crew of a sailing vessel that had drifted, after being dismasted in a storm, into the Sargasso Sea."
"You might tell us where the Sargasso Sea is," struck in Harry. "I never heard of it."
"Why, it's a vast expanse of floating seaweed brought together by circling ocean currents," explained Billy. "There are hundreds of miles of seaweed in it and from the name of the weed it gets its title of Sargasso. It is in the north Atlantic, just about off the Gulf of Mexico roughly speaking, though many hundred miles from land. It is shifting all the time though, I understand, and a ship that once gets into it never gets out. The weed just holds her in its grip till she rots. Bluewater Bill told me that, after his ship drifted into it, he counted ten steamers and four sailing vessels drifting idly about on the brown expanse that spread like a desert on all sides. But the most remarkable of all, according to his story, was a high-pooped, castle-bowed affair with three masts that the tattered sails still hung to. According to him she was a real, sure-enough galleon. One of the old treasure vessels that used to ply the Spanish Main."