ht, Jack?" asked Percival.

"Yes, but get away," answered Jack feebly.

Percival was not slow to obey the injunction.

Seizing the oars, he quickly backed water and then turned the head of the
boat toward the entrance of the cave, whence he shortly saw the light
streaming in as he pulled a quick, powerful stroke.

"I'm glad that's over!" he said with a sigh of deep relief as he neared
the opening. "No more exploring queer places like this again!"

When he was outside the cave he rested on his oars and said:

"You are all right again, Jack?"

"Yes," said Jack, getting up and seating himself on a thwart, "but I don't
want another such an experience. I feel as if all the blood had been drawn
out of me by that horrible thing in there."

Out in the bright sunlight, away from the gruesome cave and its dreadful
tenant, Jack seemed to recover his spirits quickly, however, and he
presently took one of the oars and then another, and said:

"It's all right, Dick. We are away from the horrible thing and I thank
heaven I am still alive to tell of it. Let us go somewhere else."

"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 bi