“What’s a flounder?” asked Arnold intensely interested.

“Well,” explained Frank, “a flounder is a queer sort of a flat fish.  He’s dark on top and white on the bottom.  He swims on his side and has his two eyes on the one side of his head unlike any other fish.  When the tide comes in he comes close inshore and burrows down into the sand to wait till a minnow floats by.  He reaches up and snaps Mr. Minnow and then goes on to another good spot.  If you take a bright light you can walk right up to the flounder without alarming him.  Then before he knows what is coming, you thrust a spear down through his head and you have him.”

“Did you get yours that way?” eagerly asked Arnold.

“Not the first one,” replied Frank with a laugh.  “I just scared the first one.  And I’m afraid I forgot for a minute that I was a Boy Scout.  I was mighty hungry and that fellow looked so nice and fat I just felt as if I simply had to have him.”

Jack’s arm stole inside Frank’s and a pressure of sympathy told the Bob White that a Beaver understood his former trouble.

“I move we go and get Frank’s fire stick and bow,” Harry suggested, “and then put out the signal fires and hit the trail for the mainland.  It is getting along in the afternoon and I’m hungry and if we make Pascagoula tonight, we’ll have to go some.”

“Second the motion,” declared Arnold.  “But where does Pascagoula lie from here?  Where is this place, anyway?”

“We’re on Petit Bois Island, I think,” replied Frank.  “At least, one of the men suggested that I be put ashore on Petit Bois and the rest agreed, arguing that I would stay here only a short time before some fishermen would visit the island and find me.”

“Then in that case,” Jack stated, “Pascagoula lies just about northwest of us.  If our compass hadn’t been disarranged by the horseshoe, we’d have been in the harbor by this time,” he added.

“Your compass disarranged by a horseshoe?” queried Frank.

“Yes,” was Jack’s laughing rejoinder.  “Did you ever hear such a tale?  And it was lucky for you it happened.  There’s a case of a horseshoe being lucky for you when you’ve never seen it yet!”

After Jack had related the tale of the horseshoe and its relation to their present situation, Arnold suggested that they visit Frank’s camp and then go aboard the Fortuna.  This met the approval of all the boys.  A trip to the wreckage disclosed the fact that Frank had made his bed on the hard, smooth sand with a fire in front of him for protection from the chill winds of the night.

“Here’s the fire stick,” exultantly cried Arnold.  “Gee, won’t I have a great story written about this adventure when I get back to little old Chi.  Sherman Street won’t know me when I arrive.”

“Hurray,” cried Harry who had wandered a short distance from the others.  “Hurray, I’ve found the horse that belongs to the horseshoe!  Here he is buried upside down in the sand.”