y, perhaps, in a
cockroach ..."

"He's a cockroach, all right," said Charlie.

"Maybe," I assented. "I don't pretend to love him, but--"

"If you don't mind," interrupted Charlie, "we'll let it go at 'but'--".
And he rose. "The tide's beginning to run out. Send me word where you
are, as soon as you get a chance; and good luck to you, old chap, and
your doubloons and pieces of eight!"

Then we walked down to his row-boat, and soon he was aboard the sponger.
Her sails ran up, and they were off down stream--poor Tobias, manacled,
somewhere between decks.

"See you in Nassau!" I shouted.

"Right-O!" came back the voice of the straightest and simplest
Englishman in the world.

BOOK III

_Across the scarce-awakened sea,
With white sail flowing,
And morning glowing,
I come to thee--I come to thee._

_Past lonely beaches,
And gleaming reaches,
And long reefs foaming,
Homing--homing--
A-done with roaming,
I come to thee._

_The moon is failing,
A petal sailing
Down in the west
That bends o'er thee;
And the stars are hiding,
As we go gliding
Back to the nest,
Ah! back to thee._

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

_In Which We Gather Shells--and Other Matters._

With Charlie gone, and duck-shooting not being one of my passions, there
was nothing to detain me in Andros. So we were soon under way, out of
the river, and heading north up the western shore of the big monotonous
island. We had some fifty miles to make before we reached its northern
extremity--and, all the way, we seldom had more than two fathoms of
water, and the coast was the same interminable line of mangroves and
thatch palms, with occasional clumps of pine trees, and here and there
the mouth of a creek, leading into duck-haunted swamps.

It was evident that the island kept its head above water with
difficulty, and that the course we were running over was all the time
aspiring to be dry land, right away from the coast to the Florida
channel. For miles west and north, it would have been impossible to find
more than three fathoms. As I said of the east coast, inside the reef,
it was a vast swimming bath, but of greater dimensions, a swimming bath
with a floor of alabaster, and water that seemed to be made of dissolved
moonstones.

For a while, our going seemed very much as though we were sailing a big
toy-boat in an illimitable porcelain bathtub.