“This chap I was speaking about,—­the fellow who told me so much about this region,” said Gavin. “told me there is supposed to be pirate gold buried in more than one of these keys.”

“Rot!” snorted Milo with needless vehemence.  “All poppycock!  Look at it sanely for a minute, and you’ll see that all the yarns of pirate gold-including Captain Kidd’s—­are rank idiocy.  In the first place. the pirates never seized any such fabulous sums of money as they were credited with.  The bullion ships always went under heavy man-o’-war escort.  When pirates looted some fairly rich merchant ship there were dozens of men to divide the plunder among.  And they sailed to the nearest safe port to blow it all on an orgy.  Of course, once in a blue moon they buried or hid the valuables they got from one ship while they went after another.  And if they chanced to sink or be captured and hanged during such a raid the treasure remained hidden.  If they survived, they blew it.  That’s the one off-chance of there ever being any buried pirate treasure.  And there would be precious little of it. at that.  A few hundred dollars worth at most.  No, Brice. this everlasting legend of buried treasure is fine in a sea-yarn.  But in real life it’s buncombe.”

“But this same man told me there were stories of bullion ships and even more modern vessels carrying a money cargo that sank in these waters, during storms or from running into reefs,” pursued Brice, with no great show of interest, as he leaned far overside for a second glimpse at a school of five-foot baracuda which-lay basking on the snowy surface of the sand. two fathoms below the boat.  “That, at least, sounds probable. doesn’t it?”

“No,” snapped Milo flushing angrily and his brow creasing, “it doesn’t.  These water are traversed every year by thousands of craft of all sizes.  The water is crystal clear.  Any wrecked ship could be seen at the bottom.  Why, everybody has seen the hull of that old tramp steamer a few miles above here.  It’s in deep water, at that.  What chance—?”

“Yet there are hundreds of such stories afloat,” persisted Brice.  “And there are more yarns of buried treasure among the keys than there are keys.  For instance didn’t old Caesar, the negro pirate, hang out here. somewhere?”

Milo laughed again, this time with a maddening tolerance.

“Oh, Caesar?” said he.  “To be sure.  He’s as much a legend of these keys as Lafitte is of New Orleans.  He was an escaped slave, who scraped together a dozen fellow-ruffians, black and white and yellow—­mostly yellow—­about a century ago, and stole a long boat or a broken-down sloop, and started in at the trade of pirate.  He didn’t last long.  And there’s no proof he ever had any special success.  But he’s the sea-hero of the conchs.  They’ve named a key and a so-called creek after him, and in my father’s time there used to be an old iron ring in a bowlder known as ‘Caesar’s Rock.’  The ring was probably put there by oystermen.  But the conchs insisted Caesar used to tie up there.  Then there’s the ‘Pirates’ Punchbowl,’ off Coconut Grove.  Caesar is supposed to have dug that.  He—­”