k our way with care. I have seen
pleasanter landscapes than this, but I like it better than Blackbeard's
company."

There was no disputing this statement and Joe plucked up spirit, as was
his habit when another arduous task confronted him. Cautiously they made
their way from one quaking patch of sedge to another or scrambled to
their middles. There came a ridge of higher ground thick with brambles
and knotted vines and they traversed this with less misery. A gleam of
water among the trees and they took it to be the creek which they sought
to find. Wary of lurking Indians, they wormed along on their stomachs
and so came to the high swamp grass of the bank.

They swam the creek and crept toward its mouth. Jack was rooting along
like a bear when he almost bumped into the dugout canoe which had looked
so very like a stranded log. It was tied to a tree by a line of twisted
fibre and the rising tide had borne it well up into the marsh. Here it
was invisible from the ship and only a miracle of good fortune had
revealed it to the lads in that glimpse from the deck at sundown.

They crawled over the gunwale and slumped in the bottom of the pirogue,
which was larger than they expected, a clumsy yet seaworthy craft with a
wide floor and space to crowd a dozen men. Fire had helped to hollow it
from a giant of a cypress log, for the inner skin was charred black.
Three roughly made paddles were discovered. This was tremendously
important, and all they lacked was a mast and sail to be true
navigators.

Something else they presently found which was so unlooked for, so
incredible, that they could only gape and stare at each other. Tucked in
the bow was a seaman's jacket of tarred canvas, of the kind used in wet
weather. Sewed to the inside of it was a pocket of leather with a
buttoned flap. This Jack Cockrell proceeded to explore, recovering from
his stupefaction, and fished out a wallet bound in sharkskin as was the
habit of sailors to make for themselves in tropic waters. It contained
nothing of value, a few scraps of paper stitched together, a bit of
coral, a lock of yellow hair, a Spanish coin, some shreds of dried
tobacco leaf.

Carefully Jack examined the ragged sheets of paper which seemed to be a
carelessly jotted diary of dates and events. Upon the last leaf was
scrawled, "_Bill Saxby, His Share_," and beneath this entry such items
as these:

"Aprl. ye 17--A Spanish shippe rich laden. 1 sack
Van