this one it'd have been the next one we passed anchored along
the coast."

"Who are you?" demanded Ardita suddenly. "And what are you?"

"You've decided not to go ashore?"

"I never even faintly considered it."

"We're generally known," he said "all seven of us, as Curtis
Carlyle and his Six Black Buddies late of the Winter Garden and
the Midnight Frolic."

"You're singers?"

"We were until to-day. At present, due to those white bags you
see there we're fugitives from justice and if the reward offered
for our capture hasn't by this time reached twenty thousand
dollars I miss my guess."

"What's in the bags?" asked Ardita curiously.

"Well," he said "for the present we'll call it--mud--Florida
mud."



III