Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II DIVING FOR TURTLES WHETHER it was the ill-concealed smile of incredulity on the face of my boatman, or the rashness of over-confidence I know not, but I had announced that I was going to take a big green turtle, single handed, on the outer reef, and the statement had aroused no little interest among the fishermen, wreckers and Conchs, who made up the little settlement on Long Key. It was April and intense heat—the advance guard of the long summer—was beginning to be felt; yet the days were perfect. The islands—a dozen or more—seemed like emeralds in settings of silver, resting on an azure sea of glass. Not a ripple could be seen save that made by the fin of some vagrant shark; not a sound broke the stillness, except the occasional " ha-ha " of the laughing gull, and the musical and distant roar of the waves as they piled in upon the outer reef. The air of early morning was cool and delicious, and as the sun came up, suffusing the eastern sky with long vermilion streamers, Long John would shove off his dinghy, and with myself as companion, scull out into the great lagoon, which formedthe central field of the growing atoll, and search for turtles or the large and gamy barracuda, both of which we took with the grains. Long John was well named. Nearly seven feet in height, thin as the conventional rail, angular as a manzanita tree, his face fiery red, from the combined results of Bacchus and the sun god, he was a landmark; and standing in the dinghy, slowly sculling, his long grains-pole in hand, his small gray eyes fixed ahead, he looked from a distance like the mast of the boat; indeed, it was said on the reef that once when out with his mate, Bob Rand, he stood up, and stretching his arms wide apart as yards, boomed out a big foresail which sailed the craft i...