ough."

"You can't do that," the man laughed. "This way, gents."

He led them out on a pier and down a flight of steps to a float
alongside of which a boat was moored. The boat was a flat-bottom affair,
rigged with a canopy top, and having seats along the sides.

Extending down the middle of the craft was something which looked like a
long box, open at the top. The lower side of the box was covered with
glass. Passengers on the seats could look into the box, through the
glass bottom, and see objects on the ocean's bed with wonderful
clearness. A man up near the prow did the rowing.

"I claim," said the runner, "that this here's the only kind of a boat to
use in seein' the marine gardens. We can go places in these little boats
that they can't get, to in the big ones."

That must have been a particularly slack day for the glass-bottom boats,
for Clancy and Hill were the only passengers on this particular craft.

"I reckon that's all, Ike," said the man who had brought the two youths
to the boat: "let 'er go!"

Ike proceeded to use the oars, and, while the boat rounded the end of
the pier, Hiram hung to his seat with both hands, and looked wildly and
expectantly at Clancy.

"Beginnin' to feel squeamish," mumbled Hiram.

"Don't think about it," returned the motor wizard. "Look down at the
marine gardens, Hiram."

Hill gradually forgot his uneasiness. There was hardly any motion to the
boat, save a slow, steady gliding onward. Off Avalon there is no surf,
the tides rise and fall, as on the mainland, but the sea is usually as
quiet as the waters of a pond.

There were other glass-bottom boats out that afternoon, and they were
scattered just off shore to Sugarloaf Rock and beyond. Not far from the
towering Rock were two or three rowboats, each manned by an oarsman, and
carrying a man in a bathing suit.

"Them's divers," explained Ike, nodding to the men in the bathing suits.
"Didn't you see 'em when your boat come in?"

"No," answered Hill, "I was too busy gettin' ashore. What were those
divers doing when our boats came in?"

"Passengers were throwin' money overboard and they were divin' for it.
You'll see 'em when you get in the steamer to go back to Pedro. Over yan
by Ole Sugarloaf the divers goes down under the glass bottoms, looks up
at you from below, makes faces, throws kisses at the girls, and I don't
know what all. Likewise, they brings up abalone shells; you can see 'em
brought up, and can buy 'em for