“Right you are, I will,” echoed Percival heartily.  “If I had had any idea that there was such a thing in that place you could not have hired me to go into it or to have let you ventured there.  I am glad enough that I was around to be of assistance.”

“So am I, Dick, but suppose we say no more about it.  I hate to even think of the horrible object and I only hope that I will not dream of it these nights.”

Then the boys rowed swiftly away from the place where they had had such a thrilling encounter and never once looked back at it.

CHAPTER XI

THE VOICES IN THE WOODS

After the boys had gone some little distance from the water cave they pulled at a more easy stroke and began to talk again, their thrilling experience with the devil fish having made them silent for a time.

They did not allude to it again, but talked of other matters, Percival saying as they neared a green, shady wood where the trees grew thick and cast a deep shade on the white sands and showed a more than twilight darkness in their farther recesses, everything being quiet and peaceful within those heavy shadows: 

“That’s a place where everything seems to be asleep even at midday, Jack.  It looks like the cave of the seven sleepers that we used to read about in mythology.”

“It seems quiet enough for a fact,” said Jack with a smile, “but it is hot outside and the birds are probably all taking a rest.  Probably just before dawn or at sunset you would hear them making noise enough.”

“It is a thick wood all right, just the place to get lost in.  If the African jungle is any worse than this I don’t care to enter it.”

“The trouble is you can’t see far ahead and then there are briars and brambles and a lot of spiky plants, prickly pears and Spanish bayonets and cactus to run against and get scratched and cut with.  Our own woods are good enough for me, or bad enough, I might say.”

“I wonder if we could find anything if we did go in there?” said Percival musingly as they rowed along shore, fascinated by the bright glare of the sands, the dense green of the woods and the dear blue of the skies.  “We might have a try at it, Jack.”

“Yes, I suppose we might if we did not go too——­” And then Jack suddenly paused and a look of alarm came across his face.

A harsh voice from the wood suddenly interrupted him and he glanced here and there to see whence it came.

The words he heard were in Spanish, as far as he could judge, but he could see no one.

Other voices quickly joined the first and the boys rowed out somewhat from shore and looked closely at the woods, expecting to see some one.

“There are people on the island after all, Jack.”

“Yes, Spaniards, I think.  Sailors, I guess.  At any rate they are not using the choicest language from what little I know of the language; Jack.  I do not see any one.  Do you?”