FIGHTING A MAN-EATING SHARK
It was some time before the boys heard about old John Gomez; but the tales that were current from Mobile to Key West would fill a book. According to one story, he was the only surviving member of a pirate crew—one of the many that formerly cruised about in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The crew of this ship had a disagreement about the division of the spoils, and a great fight followed. All but Gomez were slain, and though he was badly wounded, he hid the great treasure which was in his hands, and so carefully that no one had ever been able to learn its whereabouts. The old man had never alluded to the subject; and it was feared that his secret might die with him. Some said that the young woman the boys saw with the old man was a relative, others declared that she was merely a guard stationed to secure the secret should the centenarian by any chance let it drop unawares. Gomez’s general appearance did not a little to give credence to these stories; his looks were certainly of the piratical order—a lean, sallow face, keen, piercing black eyes, gold rings in his ears, and a watchfulness that never wearied, were characteristics which he had in common with light-fingered gentlemen of seafaring tastes.
Over a year later, the boys read a newspaper clipping describing his death. He was drowned while sailing alone in his sloop on the open Gulf. But they never heard that any of the treasure was ever found.
For several days the voyagers travelled among the Ten Thousand Islands, winding in and out through the labyrinthine channels. It was a journey full of incident. Islands of every size and shape—green islands and islands bare of verdure—crowded the sea.
A whole week passed, and the boys did not see the least sign of a white man. Every vessel of sufficient size stood out into the Gulf to avoid the winding passages. They ran across several Seminole Indians, tall, splendid fellows, who considered the coils of bright-colored cloth on their heads sufficient covering for the whole body.
At last they sighted Cape Sable, and they knew that with a favorable wind the “Gazelle” would soon be ploughing the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
Off Cape Sable the “Gazelle” ran into a fleet of fishing boats, and for an hour the boys and the men of the fishing boats swapped yarns; then they busied themselves laying in a stock of cocoanuts against future need.
It was a straight run from Cape Sable to Grassy Key, one of the long chain of islands which drip off the end of the Florida peninsula. At last, only the narrow island lay between the “Gazelle” and the Atlantic Ocean. The great body of salt water Kenneth and his crew had so perseveringly fought to gain was almost in sight, and the deeper note of its thundering surf could at times be plainly heard. What might befall them on the greater tide they knew not, but with undaunted courage all were impatient to venture, and to learn.
The “Gazelle” reached her secure anchorage just as the storm, which had been threatening several days, broke with terrible fury. Sheltered as they were, the joy of the boys at reaching the last obstacle to their way to the Atlantic, gave place to awe as they heard the roar of the wind and felt the shock of the beating surf on the coral shores outside. For three days a heavy wind prevailed—too strong to allow of the “Gazelle” venturing out. In fact, the seas had been swept free of all craft as if by a gigantic broom. Then the boys were forced to live on an almost purely vegetable diet of cocoanuts and oatmeal—a liberal supply of weevils in the last constituting the only foreign element in the otherwise strictly vegetable nature of the food. At the end of the three days, the wind subsided enough to allow the yacht to crawl out of her hole, and with wings spread wide, she entered the dangerous passage that led to the almost limitless waste of waters of the grand old ocean.
It was a proud moment for Kenneth when his yacht sailed out on the broad Atlantic—pride in his boat, pride in the crew, and a pardonable satisfaction with his own good work.