“Hello!  Are you up there?”

“Yes!” shouted Jack.  “Are you all right?”

“Sure I am.  Wait till I get the rope under my arms.  I’ve got a bag of the stuff, as I said I would, but I don’t think——­”

“You don’t think what?” asked Jack, thinking that he detected something in the tone of the boy’s voice that indicated danger of some sort.

“Nothing, wait till I get the rope fast.”

“Very good.  Take your time.”

“All right,” the boy called in a few moments.  “I have got it.  Haul away!”

They saw the light of the electric torch flashing upon them, as the boy came nearer and nearer to them, and at last drew him out of the hole, Jack noticing that he seemed quite pale, and then suddenly noticing that he was wet up to his knees.

“Hello! what is this, Jesse W., how do you happen to be so wet?” he asked.  “There was no water in——­”

“Yes, some,” answered the boy quietly.  “It had worked in under the door or at the side somewhere.  Maybe they had settled.  Anyhow, I got the bag and here it——­” and then the boy sank limp and helpless into Jack’s arms and fainted away.

“By George! he was a plucky little fellow and no mistake!” exclaimed Jack.  “He said that he would get the bag and he did, and standing in water up to his knees, and not knowing at what time he might have the whole Caribbean sea tumbling in upon him.  Get some water, Dick!”

The boy presently came around, however, and said faintly, but with a half laugh: 

“I told you I’d bring it, didn’t I, Jack?  Well, I did, and I hope it will be enough to keep you at the Academy for the rest of the course.  If it isn’t, my father——­”

“You are a brave young fellow, Jesse W., but you don’t go back for another, I tell you that!”

“You bet he does not!” echoed Percival.  “So the water had made its way in, had it?  That’s the last we will see of the place, then.”

“Yes, it had come in somewhere, at the bottom, I guess.  Still, it was not coming in all the time nor fast, and I wanted to see the place, and I had promised to fetch a bag of gold to Jack and——­”

“And you wanted to keep your word even if you were drowned,” sputtered Percival.  “Much you could have kept it in that case.  You are a young brick, J.W., but don’t you do anything like that again.”

“Well, I won’t, if you say so, Dick,” answered the little fellow.

“That’s a brave little chap,” said the captain.  “He said he’d do a thing, and he did it.  There’s lots who wouldn’t.”

They returned to the boat, and the captain told Percival to row toward the reefs and as close to the stump of a mast as it was safe to go, as he wanted to observe the wreck again.

Nearing the wreck they noticed that the water was swirling and eddying very violently at a point where they judged the cabin to be, and the captain said, after looking at the boiling waters for a short time: