f water, which
you're crazy to reach and suck up. But the shipwrecked tar always sees
a vessel coming to his relief, which keeps on rushing through the water,
right up over reef and everything and disappears over the island leaving
him broken-hearted at the deception caused by conditions in the
atmosphere."

Jack knew considerable about these things, for he had been in strange
lands, even before he took to roaming around with Ned, when the latter
entered the employ of the Government Secret Service.

"All you say is true enough, Jack," the patrol leader told him, "but in
this case it isn't a deception. All of us can see the smoke hanging low
down, that tells of steam vessels of some type out there, possibly
trawlers, fishing. But we didn't enlist in this business intending to
solve any riddles connected with Hudson Bay. I've been told that there
is no place in Northern latitudes where so many strange stories have
originated, as this same big sheet of salt water. Four-fifths of it have
never been fully explored, so that they do not yet know what may be
here."

Jimmy had been silent while all this talk was going on. But it could be
readily believed that his restless mind was not inactive. He proved this
by suddenly nodding his head, and looking up at Ned in that shrewd way
he had of doing, whenever a particularly brilliant idea appealed to him.

"Chances are they're a blooming bad lot, that's what," he went on to
say, as if he meant every word of it. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised if
they turned out to be bloody pirates after all."

"Oh! perhaps Captain Kidd and his men come back to life again, eh,
Jimmy?" suggested Teddy, with a laugh.

Jimmy turned and gave the speaker a scornful look.

"Think you're smart to get that off on me, don't you, Teddy?" he
remarked; "but how're you goin' to prove that it ain't even as bad as
that? Don't they say this here fleet comes and goes like ghosts of the
past? Mebbe they are the spirits of Kidd, Blackbeard, Morgan, Lafitte,
and all that gay crowd of buccaneers that flourished in the early days
of our country. Supposin' I said I believed that way, it'd be up to you
to prove me wrong, wouldn't it? Let's see you do it. Call 'em up on the
wireless limited or the telephone and interview the commodore. Bah!
don't be so quick to poke fun at everybody that's got an idea you happen
to think stretched. I'll even say that I've got half a sneakin' notion
that it might be old Kidd himself, c