"On the western side, just off Great Bahama Island and well in the Florida Straits."
"I sailed all through that group on the old Billy Ruffian," went on Dick, "wherever the channels were deep enough to float us. There's a good deal of shoal water, and a lot of places where you can go off soundings at a jump. That submarine, if she takes a straight course, will have to keep on the surface a good share of the time."
"Jurgens will take to the Florida Straits and then turn in when he gets opposite Turtle Key. That will give him deep water all the way. After I left you boys last night," added Townsend, shifting the subject, "I had a call from McMillan. He told me that the skipper of the Crescent claimed to have had nothing to do with the picking up of Jurgens off the Heinz pier. Whistler, one of the men on the sailboat, got the three men comprising the crew on his side, and they overpowered the skipper, tied him hand and foot and laid him on the floor of the cuddy. Anyhow, McMillan says that when he boarded the Crescent, the skipper was helpless in the cabin and all the others who had been on the boat had disappeared. It looks a little 'fishy' but that must have been the way of it. The skipper of the Crescent couldn't afford to harbor a fugitive like Jurgens."
"It was all a brazen piece of work from start to finish," observed Matt. "The capture of the Grampus was second only to the desperate play Jurgens made when he stole the chart. Jurgens, from what I saw and heard while Holcomb and I were aboard the Grampus, knows a good deal about the submarine, but——"
"He learned all that while he was working in the shipyard," put in Townsend.
"But does he know enough to run the craft?" queried Matt.
"I think not. He and his gang are probably forcing Cassidy, my machinist, to run the submarine for him. If Cassidy, Burke and Harris, my men in the Grampus, succeeded in turning on their captors and recapturing the boat, we'll be having all our work for nothing—that is, so far as the Grampus is concerned. In that event, we'll look for the iron chest."
"Dot's der talk!" cried Carl. "Ve vill findt der dreasure. It vas some birate dreasure, I bed you! I vouldt like to findt a chest full mit bieces oof eight und dot odder druck vat birates used to take from peobles pefore dey made dem valk der blank."
"Bosh, Carl!" exclaimed Dick, disgustedly. "You're a lubber to take stock in any such yarn. Anyhow, I should think you'd had enough to do with pirates."
This reference to the way Carl had butted into the moving pictures brought grins to the faces of Townsend and Matt. It was a sore spot with Carl, and he tried at once to get his companions to thinking of something else.