ers for dinner. There were too few sponges to
please Captain Wilson, who sailed over the ground whenever the water
was smooth, studying the bottom with practiced eye and throwing out
little floats, with anchors attached, wherever a sponge was seen.

"I'm going to the 'Lake,'" said the captain, one afternoon at the
end of a day of little success. "It's a feast or a famine there. You
get rich or go broke."

"What is there at the 'Lake'?" asked Dick.

"Sponge, all sponge, the bottom lined with sponge. If the weather is
just right we'll pile the deck with sponges in a week till you can't
see over them. If the weather isn't exactly right we won't get a
sponge. On one cruise there, the men on this sloop averaged
twenty-five dollars a day apiece. I've been there five times since
without ever making enough to pay for our salt."

A week later the captain said to the boy:

"Dick, you are a mascot. You've brought us big luck. We never had
such weather here but once and I don't care now how soon it comes on
to blow. I reckon it'll begin to-night from the looks and we'll hike
for Key West to-morrow."

Dick was glad to go. The week had been a hard one, the work
incessant and each night he felt as if his back were broken. He was
used to the fresh, sweet air of his country home and the sloop he
was in was arranged like most of the sponging craft, with quarters
sufficient for half the crew it carried. The deck of the sponger was
piled with the result of the work of the week. The sponge of
commerce, the one you buy at the drug store, is the skeleton of the
creature; the thing taken from the water is its corpse. Not until
this body has rotted away is it pleasant to live with. Day by day
the stench, like that of a charnel house, became more unbearable to
Dick. The crew seemed never to notice it, which caused the boy much
wonderment that noses had ever been given them. He was glad when a
strong wind came and swept some of the smell away instead of leaving
it to settle in chunks in every nook and cranny on the boat.

At Key West most of the crew went to their homes, but Dick was
invited to live on the sloop till he found a boat for the coast he
wanted to reach.

Cargoes sent to Key West for a market are almost always sold at
auction and the auction houses in the early morning are busy marts.
Cargoes of sponge, fruit, vegetables, lumber and other goods are
sold in lots to suit purchasers, who range from the dealer who buys
by the c