arm by way of signal. It was Samson; and evidently the mouth of the
creek was right there in front of us--under our very noses, so to
say--and yet it was impossible to make it out. However, at this signal,
I stirred up the still-sleeping crew, and presently we had the anchors
up, and the engine started at the slowest possible speed.

The tide was beginning to run in, so we needed very little way on us. I
pointed out Samson to the captain, and, following the "King's"
instructions, told him to steer straight for the negro. He grumbled not
a little. Of course, if I wanted to run aground, it was none of his
affair--etc., etc. Then I stationed the sturdiest of the two deck-hands
on the port bow with a long oar, while I took the starboard with
another. Very slowly and cautiously we made in, pointing straight for a
thick growth of mangrove bushes. Samson stood there and called:

"All right, sar. Keep straight on. You'll see your way in a minute."

And, sure enough, when we were barely fifty feet away from the shore,
and there seemed nothing for it but to run dead aground, low down
through the floating mangrove branches we caught sight of a narrow gleam
starting inland, and in another moment or two our decks were swept with
foliage as the _Flamingo_ rustled in, like a bird to cover, through an
opening in the bushes barely twice her beam; and there before us,
snaking through the brush, was a lane of water which immediately began
to broaden between palmetto-fringed banks, and was evidently deep enough
for a much larger vessel.

"Plenty of water, sar," hallooed Samson from the bank, grinning a huge
welcome. "Keep a-going after me," and he started trotting along the
creek-side.

As we pushed into the glassy channel, I standing at the bow, my eyes
were arrested by a tremendous flashing commotion in the water to the
right and left of us--like the fierce zigzagging of steel blades, or the
ferocious play of submerged lightning. It was a select company of
houndfish and sharks that we had disturbed, lying hellishly in wait
there for the prey of the incoming tide. It was a curiously sinister
sight, as though one had come upon a nest of water-devils in council,
and the fancy jumped into my mind that here were the spirits of Teach
and his crew once more evilly embodied and condemned to haunt for ever
this gloomy scene of their crimes.

Samson went trotting along the twisting banks, we cautiously feeling our
way after him, for somethi