The trip across the Gulf of Mexico to Dry Tortugas Light was nothing but a rest and a joy to everybody. It was still delightful and wonderfully interesting all the way around the City of Key West and up by the southeastern coast of Florida with its many lights and coral reefs. Here Genevieve's guidebook came again into prominence. "The Sand Key Light 'way back there is our most southern possession, and only fifty-seven miles from the line of the Tropics," she announced glibly one day. "We're coming to the American Shoals Light, the Sombrero Light, Alligator Light, Carysfort Light and Fowey Rock Light." "Mercy! Didn't you sleep _any_ last night?" inquired Tilly, sympathetically. "I suppose you mean you think it must have taken all night to learn all that," laughed Genevieve. "But it didn't." "Maybe you know some more, now," hazarded Tilly. "Certainly. After we strike Jupiter Light, we veer off into the Atlantic out of sight of land." "I thought lighthouses were put up so you wouldn't 'strike' them," observed Tilly, with smooth politeness; "but then, of course if you do strike them, it is quite to be expected that you veer off into the Atlantic, and never see land again. Besides, I found all those lighthouses and things on a paper last night, but it was the southern trip that did all that. Maybe we, going north, don't do the same things at all. I sha'n't swallow all you say, anyhow, till I know for sure." "Children, stop your quarreling," commanded Bertha Brown, sternly. "Now I've been learning something worth while. _I_ know the saloon deck from the promenade deck, and I can rattle off 'fore' and 'aft' and 'port' and 'starboard' as if I'd been born on shipboard!" "Pooh! You wait," teased Tilly. "There'll come a time when you won't think you're born on shipboard, and you won't know or care which is fore or aft--any of you. And it will come soon, too. Those were porpoises playing this morning--when Cordelia thought she saw the sea serpent, you know. I heard a man say he thought it meant a storm was coming. And if it does--you just wait," she finished laughingly. "Oh, I'm waiting," retorted Bertha. "I like waiting. Besides, I don't think it's coming, anyhow!" But it did come. Off the coast of South Carolina they ran into a heavy storm, and the great ship creaked and groaned as it buffeted wind and wave. In the little parlor of the suite the entire party, banished from wet, slippery decks, made merry together, and declared it was all fun, anyway. But gradually the ranks thinned. First Mrs. Kennedy asked to be excused, and went into the bedroom. Alma Lane went away next. She said she wanted a drink of water--but she did not return, and very soon Elsie Martin, looking suspiciously white about the lips, said she guessed she would go and find Alma. She, too, did not return.