Title: The Boy Chums in the Gulf of Mexico; Or, On a Dangerous Cruise with the Sponge Collectors
Description: "It's just like stepping suddenly into a strange country. I am glad we came even if we decide not to go into the business." 
The speaker, a sturdy, manly-looking boy of eighteen, was one of a party of four persons who were strolling along a street in the Greek section of Tarpon Springs, a small Florida town, located on the Anclote River, a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico. His companions were a boy about his own age but of less robust appearance, a little negro lad with a good- humored intelligent face, and a middle-aged, heavily-bearded, blue-eyed man whose tattooed arms and rolling gait told of a life spent on tossing seas and whose confident bearing and air of authority stamped him as one above the rank of a common sailor.