in the face from the heavy hind flipper of the turtle.  Dick sculled for an hour without seeing another turtle, when, as he was returning to the boat and within a hundred yards of it, one rose beside the dingy so near that the boy was on its back before it could go under the surface.  He soon had his charger in fair control, but the science of riding a big loggerhead turtle isn’t picked up in a minute.  One of the crew came out in a dingy to help, but Dick asked him to pick up his boat and oar and take them to the sponger and said that he would ride back on the turtle.  Sometimes his steed was manageable, and once he got within a few yards of the big boat, when it broke loose and carried him fifty yards away.  Then, as Dick tried to check the reptile, he pulled its head too far and tipped it over on its back on top of himself, with his own head so near the parrot-like jaws of the loggerhead that when they were snapped in his face they missed his nose by about an inch.  The turtle was as anxious to turn over as the boy, and, by favoring his motions, Dick soon had the creature right side up, while he again rode triumphantly on his back.  In another hour the halyards were fast to the turtle and Billy had made good his promise to ride it back to the boat.

[Illustration:  “Dick hunted all the turtles he saw”]

When the water became clear the dingies were sent out with two men in each, one of whom sculled while the other sat with his face in a water-glass watching the bottom for sponges.  The water-glass is a bucket with a glass bottom which so smooths the surface of the water as to produce the effect of a perfect calm to one who is looking through it.  The first day of sponging was like a dream to Dick.  The water was smooth as a mirror and no water-glass was needed.  He sculled slowly over water so clear that he seemed to be floating in the air.  Beneath him was fairyland, filled with waving sea-feathers and anemones, paved with curious shells, strangely beautiful forms of coral and sponges of various kinds, and alive with fish of many varieties.  Sometimes there floated on the surface of the water Portuguese men-of-war, most beautiful of created things, like iridescent bubbles, with long silken filaments, delicately lined in pink, purple and entrancing blue.  Lighter than thistledown, fitted to drift with the merest zephyr, they can nevertheless force their way against a breeze.  Harmless as a soap-bubble in appearance, each of them is charged with virulent poison, and when Dick touched one with his hand he received a shock that made him wonder if a bunch of hornets had hidden in that innocent-looking bubble.