“A little.  I can row better.”

“Have to scull in sponging, but you’ll pick that up.  Can you come aboard now?  I want to be off.”

“I need some clothes and would like to say ‘good-bye’ to some friends on the steamer.”

“I can fit you out on board with all the clothes you will need on the cruise, so hurry up and see your friends.  I’ll wait here for you.”

But Molly and her father had left the steamer and Dick went with Captain Wilson aboard his sloop, which sailed at once.

The captain hunted up some clothes for Dick to wear while sponging and as the boy came on deck after putting them on, his first glance fell on the white sails of a schooner yacht which had just passed them, but was then two hundred yards away.  The beauty of the boat appealed to Dick and his eyes rested lingeringly upon her.  How much greater would have been his interest had he known that the two forms which he could see on the deck of the yacht, near the companionway, were the Molly of whom he was thinking at that moment, and her father, and that they were talking of him.  What a pity that he couldn’t have known that Key West had been searched for him and that Molly’s father had offered a reward for his name and address!  Had Dick come on deck two minutes sooner the bow of the yacht Gypsey would have been thrown up in the wind and that tiny launch lowered from the boat’s davits in less time than it takes to tell of it.  And then, had Molly’s father known Dick’s name, he would have taken the boy to his yacht, if he had had to tie him to do it, but if Dick had once heard the name of Molly’s father it would not have been necessary to tie him.  However, if either had known the name of the other this story would not have been written.

CHAPTER III

LIFE ON A SPONGER

The yacht sailed on and Dick, walking up to Captain Wilson, who stood at the wheel, said, as he lifted his cap: 

“I beg to report for duty, sir.”  The captain grinned, as he replied: 

“I hope you’ll always be as polite.  You’ll sure be a curiosity on this coast.  I’ll put you in with Pedro.  He doesn’t know much English, but you can talk enough for both.  There he is, that black-mustached fellow, with little rings in his ears.  He will let you know what your duties are.”

A string of four dingies trailed behind the sponger and as many poles, each thirty feet long, with a sponge-hook at one end, lay upon the deck.  Pedro was examining one of these poles when Billy went to him and said: 

“Pedro, I am to go in your boat.  What do I have to do?”

“You scull where I tell you—­slow—­I look in glass—­see sponge—­take up pole—­you stop still—­then you scull where pole go—­you work good or I keek you.”

“Pedro, if you ever keek me, you’ll go overboard queek and don’t you forget it.”