"Rex, don't it make you feel like a real old Crusoe, or a Swiss Family Robinson, or something, to be left to ourselves here on this key, with only Cudjoe to cook for us, and a fine black squall coming up from the southeast, and--" "It does give a fellow some such feeling, that's a fact, Nick. But the black squall coming is just what I don't like to see. The _Pelican_ ought to be back some time early this evening, if I'm any judge of wind and weather; and I'd rather have her in before the squall comes." "Oh, pshaw!" Nick Jenner exclaimed. "I guess our fathers know how to take care of themselves in a squall. The _Pelican_ is a sound little schooner, and they have two good sailors aboard." "They'll be all right, of course; but I'd rather see them back before it begins to blow," Rex answered. His name was not Rex at all, but Harry King; but his schoolmates said that as Rex was Latin for King, that would be a good nickname for him. It was on the piazza of a rambling old house on Indian Key, among the Florida reefs, that the boys sat watching the coming storm. There was no other house on the island, and no other island within eight or ten miles. The great Alligator Light-house stood out in front of them, five miles out to sea, built on a hidden reef. The nearest store was in Key West, eighty miles away; so was the nearest doctor, the nearest everything. That made it all the jollier, the boys thought. There was nothing mysterious in Nick Jenner and Harry King being together in this lonely house on a lonely island, with the colored boy Cudjoe to cook for them. The boys live in a sea-coast city in Rhode Island, where they have boats of their own. Their fathers, Lawyer Jenner and Dr. King, are not only expert amateur sailors, but are also very fond of fishing and shooting. When their fathers determined to run away from work for a month and enjoy themselves among the Florida Keys, they wisely took the boys with them; for Rex being past fifteen and Nick almost sixteen, they could make themselves useful while they were enjoying it all. The house was not part of the original programme, for they expected to live on the boat; but the man from whom they chartered the schooner in Key West owned the house too, as well as the island; and when he offered the use of the house, partly furnished, they did not refuse it--particularly as a neat little sharpie called the _Dolphin_ belonged with the house, and lay at anchor just off the beach. "How white the light-house stands out against the black sky!" Nick exclaimed. "It is queer the water should be shallow for five miles out to the light-house, and then go right off deep into the Florida straits, deep enough for the biggest ships. I like to see them going past--the big Spanish steamers bound for Havana, and the American fellows for Key West and New Orleans."