As Dick spoke he raised the gun to his shoulder and fired.  A little black creature, thirty yards away in the grass, sprang into the air and fell to the ground.  Both of the boys started for it, but Tom was ahead and looked back upon them, growling fiercely, with his fangs fixed in the throat of the dying creature.  Dick tried to coax the lynx to give up the creature he had seized, but the animal was filled with the fierceness of his race and even Dick dared not touch him.  The creature which the cat held in its claws was clearly a rabbit, little and jet black, unlike anything which either of the boys had ever seen before.

“I’ve heard of these little Everglade rabbits,” said Ned.  “Tommy told me of a key in the Everglades where there were plenty of them.  If we had time we might look it up.”

“How much time have you got, Neddy?”

“Another month will use up the time I said I would be gone.  I left that word for Dad in Myers.  Guess he’s there now and maybe my sister with him.  He won’t worry a minute till the time I set is up, after that there’ll be trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“’Most anything,” laughed Ned.  “Might be a lot of nurses out looking for a lost baby.”

“He won’t be frightened about you if you’re not quite up to time, will he?”

“Not exactly frightened, but he will want to see me, and I’ll be glad enough to see him, and sis, too.”

“I knew you had a sister, but you never talked about her much.”

“She’s a nice child, alle samee.  I think you’re going to like her.  She’s a little your style of foolishness.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it isn’t very bad.  But you haven’t had much to say about your own self, lately.  You never told me exactly what took you around by Key West.  Why didn’t you come straight to Fort Myers instead of taking the tiny little chance of finding me in the big Everglades?”

“Well, I’ll tell you.  You see, mother knew how much I wanted to go with you on this hunt and she begged me to let her foot the bills.  Of course I couldn’t stand for that, you know, and—­”

“Oh, Of course not, you stuck-up little donkey,” interrupted Ned.

“So I started as a stowaway on the Key West steamer—­”

“You cheeky little imp!  Did they put you in command of the ship when they found you?”

“No, only put me in the fireroom, shoveling coal in the furnace.”

“But that’s not boy’s work.  What business—­”

“Hold on, Ned, wait till I get through.  The captain was bully.  So was everybody else.  I went to him soon as we were outside Sandy Hook and asked for a job.  I was independent about it.  I believe I offered to swim ashore if he didn’t happen to have a job for me.  He gave me an easy one, for a boy, but I struck and asked for a man’s work, and got it—­in the fireroom.  But I pulled through, Neddy, and made good, though once or twice I did have to call myself hard names and think how you’d have hung on, if you’d been in my place.  Yes, everybody was good to me.  One passenger wanted to pay for a first-class passage for me and I had hard work to beg off, and—­but that’s all.”