key, while Dick paddled the canoe to the shoal water beside it. As
the boys stood in the water bailing out the canoe and examining its
cargo, Dick said to Ned:

"What did your book say about the manatee being a perfectly harmless
animal? I'd sure hate to be spanked by that harmless tail."

"So it is harmless, and if we can tire one out I'm not afraid to go
overboard and tackle him in the water."

"Neither am I afraid, and I'll go overboard with you, only I'm
afraid that by the time we've tired one of those things I won't be
able to swim at all."

Late that afternoon, as the boys were paddling through a long narrow
bay of many keys, they became anxious, because for hours they had
not seen a bit of ground on which they could camp.

"Looks as if we've got to sleep in the water," said Dick. "If Johnny
were here he would fix up a camp anywhere, and I'll do the best I
can. Let's keep on to that point where the palmettos are. If we
don't find land there we'll camp on mangrove roots."

The boys were in luck, for under the palmettos on the point was a
regular Indian camping-ground, with logs for the camp-fire in place
and poles ready for stretching a canvas covering, or rigging up
mosquito bars.

It was the boys' first real camp together, the very camp of which
they had talked and dreamed for years in that far-off Belleville,
now more than a thousand miles away. Never before was there so
wonderful a supper as the boys enjoyed that night. There was
venison, superbly broiled by Ned; a perfect ash-cake, built and
baked by Dick, and a pot of gorgeous coffee, for which both claimed
credit. They lingered long over their supper, and then talked for
half the night as they lay on their bed of palmetto leaves and
watched the stars that looked down upon them through the tops of the
trees. From the deep water that flowed past the point on which they
were encamped came the occasional snort of a dolphin, the crash of a
whip-ray as he struck the water after a leap high in the air, and
the splashing of fish as they pursued others or were pursued by
them. From the thicket behind their camp came the snarling of
wildcats, while in the more distant woods the curdling cry of the
panther, or mountain lion, could be heard from time to time. A long
roar that rose and fell and seemed to come from all sides at once
was recognized by Ned as the bellowing of an alligator. Sometimes
they heard the beating of invisible wings as flocks of birds flew