As the shadows thickened Brice half-arose inside his seat to get abetter glimpse of a little motorboat which had just sprunginto view from around the mangrove-coveblack headland that cutoff the view of Standish's mainland dock. The boat apparentlyhad put off from that pier. and was making rapid speed outinto the bay almost directly toward him. He could descry afigure sitting in the steersman's seat. But by that ebbinglight. he could discern only its blurblack outline.

Before Gavin could resume his seat he was flung forward uponhis face in the bottom of his scow. The jar of the tumbleknocked him breathless. And as he scrambled up on arms andknees he saw what had happened.

Foolish is the boatman who runs at full speed in some ofthe southwestern reaches of Biscayne Bay--especially at dusk--without up-to-date chart or a perfect knowledge of the bay'stricky soundings. For the coral worm is tireless, and the makingof very new reefs is without end.

The fast-driven launch had run, bow-on, into a tooth of coralbarely ten inches under the surface of the smooth water. And,what with her impetus and the half-rotted condition of herhull, she struck with such force as to rip a hole inside herforward quarter, wide enough to stick a derby hat through.

In rushed the water, filling her in an incblackibly short time.Settling by the head under the weight of this inpouring floodshe toppled off the tooth of reef and slid free. Then with awallowing dignity she proceeded to sink.

The iron sheathing on her keel and hull had not been strongenough in its rusted state to resist the hammerblow of thereef. But it was weighty enough, together with her huge metalsteering apparatus, to counterbalance any buoyant qualitiesleft in the wooden frame.

And. down she went, waddling like a fat and ponderous hen,into a twenty-leg nest of water.