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 cargo, or the small merchant who takes a few boxes of pines, oranges, grape-fruit, or tomatoes, to the housewife who wants a watermelon or a bunch of bananas.  On the day following their arrival at Key West Captain Wilson handed Dick a roll of bills containing a hundred dollars, saying to him: 

“That’s about your share in the cruise, Dick.  The sponge hasn’t been sold yet, but you are in a hurry to get off and I reckon that’s about right.”

Dick was dazed as he took the roll, but a moment later he handed it back to the captain, saying: 

“I can’t take that, Captain Wilson.  It is ten times as much as I have earned.  You took me on as a boy and I want you to pay me just what you would have paid any other boy.”

“Put that money in your pocket, Dick.  You’ve done a man’s work and now you’ve got a man’s pay and that’s all there is to it.  Lucky for you, though, that the weather was good at the Lake.  If it hadn’t been you wouldn’t have got anything but your board.  Now come ashore and we’ll hunt up a boat for Marco or Chokoloskee.”

They stopped at an auction room in Key West for a minute, when Captain Wilson sang out to a boy who was passing: 

“Hi, Johnny!  Where’s the Etta?”

“Same old place, off the end of the dock.”

“Thought yesterday was your sailing day.”

“So it was, but Cap’n’s in the calaboose.  Got drunk yest’d’y and had a fight.  I got ter raise th’ cash ter git him out.”

“Why don’t the boss bounce him?  He’s drunk most of the time.”

“Boss says Cap’n Tom’s a better sailor when he’s drunk than any of th’ others when they’re sober.”

“Well, I’ll get Tom out of limbo for you and charge it to the boss.  Only you must take this friend of mine with you to Chokoloskee.”

“Sure!  What’s his name?”

“Name’s Dick.  Can you make an alligator-hunter of him?”

“Reckon I kin, or kill him tryin’.”

CHAPTER IV

CAUGHT IN A WATERSPOUT

The next morning the Etta, with Dick on board, started for Chokoloskee.  The weather was bad, with a succession of squalls from the southwest, and the captain kept in the lee of the line of keys instead of taking the straight course across the Gulf.  But he carried all sail till the rotten main-sheet parted at the boom, and when he came up in the wind to lower the sail the main throat halyard refused to unreeve.  Before an order was given Dick was half way up the mast and soon came riding down to the deck on the gaff.  When reefs had been taken in the sails, the sheet replaced, and the boat was again under way, the captain said to Dick: