small steamer in these waters."

"Send for Mr. Amblen at once!" exclaimed the commander, who appeared to
have become suddenly excited. "There will be no moon to-night in these
parts, and we may be able to hurry this matter up if we have a competent
pilot."

Christy called Dave, and sent him for the acting third lieutenant, for
he knew that Mr. Flint had had the watch since four o'clock. Mr. Amblen
was sunning himself on the quarter deck, and he promptly obeyed the
summons.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Amblen, and I hope you will prove to be as
useful a person as I have been led to believe you may be," said the
captain.

"I shall endeavor to do my duty, sir," replied the third lieutenant,
who was always very ambitious to earn the good opinion of his superiors.
"I mean to do the best I can to make myself useful, Captain Blowitt."

"I know that very well; but the question now is what you know rather
than what you can do as an officer. Mr. Passford informs me that you
were formerly engaged in some kind of a speculation on the west coast
of Florida."

"Hardly a speculation, sir, for I was engaged in the fish business,"
replied Mr. Amblen, laughing at the name which had been given to his
calling. "When I sold a small coaster that belonged to me, I got in
exchange a tug boat. I had been out of health a few years before; I
spent six months at Cedar Keys and Tampa, and got well. Fish were plenty
here, and of a kind that bring a good price farther north. I loaded my
tug with ice, and came down here in her. I did a first-rate business
buying from boats and in catching fish myself, and for a time I made
money, though ice was so dear that I had to sell in the South."

"Did you have a pilot on board of your tug?" asked the captain.

"No, sir; I was my own pilot. I had the charts, and I studied out the
bottom, so that I knew where I was in the darkest night."

"Then you are just the person we want if you are a pilot in these
waters."

"What waters, sir? We are now off Cape St. Blas and Apalachicola Bay.
I have been into the bay, but I am not a pilot in those waters, as you
suggest."

"I have just opened my orders, and I find we are ordered to Cedar Keys,"
interposed the commander.

"That is quite another thing, sir; and there isn't a foot of bottom
within five miles of the Keys to which I have not been personally
introduced. When I was down here for my health I was on the water more
than half of the time, and I learne