"There were always the cocoanuts, of course--and I've never been able
to abide the taste of one since. Then there is, or was, a kind of
oyster, too big to be eatable unless you were powerfully hungry. We
got them by wading in the lagoon shallows. There are plenty of crabs,
as you know; they would probably be good if they were cooked. But we
of the _Mary Jane_ had no fire. The lagoon is full of fish; some good
for food, and some deadly. You try them and if you survive they are all
right. If you don't survive, they are poisonous."
"How did you catch the fish?" Van Dyck wanted to know.
"We didn't catch many of them. A diet of raw fish doesn't appeal very
strongly unless one is nearer starvation than we could be while the
cocoanuts lasted."
"No edible roots?"
"None that we ever discovered; and, anyway, they wouldn't have been
edible raw. But, say; we're missing something. How about those
trussed-up pirates? Won't the professor's natural-science class stumble
upon them and have a shock?"
At this question Van Dyck looked a trifle foolish.
"I thought we tied those fellows securely enough last night," he
offered. "Didn't you?"
"I did, indeed. Are you trying to tell me that they've picked the
locks?"
"They are not where we left them; that is one sure thing. I went out
there early this morning, meaning to make them talk and tell me what's
what on the _Andromeda_. They had disappeared."
"They are loose on the island?" I gasped.
"That would be the natural inference, you'd say. But I couldn't find
any trace of them--haven't yet found any."
"Then the _Andromeda_ must have come back to take them off."
Van Dyck's eyes narrowed.
"I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is impossible. But the seas
are still running pretty high, and if the yacht's people were able to
make a landing with either of the power launches before dawn, they are
better sailormen than I've been giving them credit for being."
"They'd come back for their men if it were humanly possible," I
ventured, "and they might have good hopes of being able to find them
alive. The wreck of the yawl happened after the yacht had disappeared,
you remember. But if they did come back, how about the treasure trove?
Would they go away again without digging up your plantation? But
perhaps they did dig it up?"
He shook his head.
"No; that is the first thing I thought of when the five men turned up
missing. The block of coral is just where we left it. Nothing has been
disturbed."
"But if that is what the landing party came for last night----"
"I know; it's a mystery, but in the heart of it lies our best hope, I
believe. They meant to dig when they made that landing last night. I
found a shovel this morning. In their hurry to get away, the yawl crew
left it on the beach and the seas had washed it up under the trees."
"Whereabouts is the hope?" I inquired.
"It is all guess-work," he admitted. "Assuming that they came last
night to dig--and didn't dig--and assuming again that they came back in
the dark hour before dawn, and still didn't dig, it is a fair inference
that we haven't seen the last of the _Andromeda_--or isn't it?"
"I don't know," I said. "The plot has grown much too complicated for
me. Meanwhile, I suppose we ought to be thankful that we haven't five
additional mouths to fill--with nothing to fill them with. You wouldn't
have let those five pirates starve, would you, Bonteck?"
The look that came into his eyes was handsomely gloomy.
"I meant to come just as near doing it as I could, and get by without
serving a sentence for manslaughter." And with that, he pulled his
cap over his eyes and walked away, coming back presently with a still
gloomier look in his eyes.
"It's hell, Dick," he broke out grittingly. "I've got to tell these
people of ours what's been done to them. It is the least I can do now.
There is starvation just ahead of us; and from what we saw last night,
it is perfectly plain that if the _Andromeda_ comes back, it won't be
for the purpose of taking us off."
"Not to take us off, perhaps, but the other motive--the motive that
brought her here last night--still exists. If she came to dig up your
buried 'ammunition' which has so mysteriously disappeared, she will
come again. You may depend upon that."
"Just the same, I've got to tell them," he said doggedly, going back to
the conscientious part of it; adding: "And I'd much rather be shot. It
was such an asinine thing, even as I had it shaped up in the beginning.
How can I ever make it appear to them as it appeared to me?--as a
harmless little practical joke, with no particular sting in its tail?
In the light of what has happened, I can never hope to make it look
that way; not even to you or to Madeleine, I'm afraid."