Dick took the rod, Ned removed the hook from the mouth of the tarpon and hoisted its head over the gunwale.  The canoe canted over until water poured over its side, and the attempt would have failed but for the tarpon which, with a blow of its tail, threw itself up in the air and fell on top of Ned, who had tumbled into the bottom of the canoe.  The sight of Ned hugging the big fish, which was spanking his legs with its tail, was too much for Dick, who sat down on the gunwale of the canoe in a spasm of mirth, and of course the craft was capsized.  Ned clung to the fish for a few seconds until his captive had bumped him with its head and slapped him with its tail a few times, when he was glad to let it go.  He then joined Dick, who was holding the rod with one hand and clinging to the canoe with the other, as he swam to the bank.

On the way back to camp Dick had several fits of laughter that made him stop paddling for a minute at a time and caused Ned to say: 

“It’s all right to laugh now, but that was my tarpon.  I had him safe in the canoe and if you hadn’t tipped us all into the river I’d have hung on to him.”

“I’m awful sorry, Ned, but if only you could have seen yourself, you’d have had to laugh or bust.  Besides, you had your fun.  You caught your tarpon and you wouldn’t have done any more if you had lain in the bottom of the canoe and let it spank you all night.”

CHAPTER XIII

EDUCATING AN ALLIGATOR

The boys wished to explore the Whitewater Bay country, and spent several days following to their sources streams that led in that direction, until satisfied that no stream connected the two regions.  Returning to Tussock Bay, they crossed it and entered a branch of Shark River, which led to Little Whitewater Bay.  As they neared the bay a loggerhead turtle rose near them and Dick wanted to hunt it.

“We need the meat,” said he.  “We can smoke it and then it is as good as jerked venison.”

“We haven’t time to smoke it.  We are in a salt-water country with only two or three days’ supply of fresh water.  We may not find any more for a week.  We’ve just got to keep moving.  I wish we had a keg of water.  If we were to spill what we’ve got in that canoe we would have to hike in a hurry, back to the Glades or some other place where we knew there was fresh water.”

On the eastern side of Little Whitewater Bay, the boys found a straight and narrow creek which led to Whitewater Bay.  Paddling for six miles, east-southeast, across the bay, they were fortunate enough to strike the narrow mouth of what soon proved to be a broad river.  They paddled long and late without Finding the fresh water they looked for, and camped on ground so wet that they had to cut branches to sleep on.  As they kept on in the morning, the river they followed forked and they took the deeper branch.  This in turn split in two and again they followed the deeper branch.  Near the close of a day of hard work the stream they were following opened out on a beautiful park-like prairie, while beside the canoe was an ideal camping site fitted by Nature to that end.