Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/153



the captain set sail in his little boat, the party which he left behind him lived on in an uneventful, uninteresting manner, which, gradually, day by day, threw a shadow over the spirits of each one of them.

Ralph, who always slept in the outer chamber of the caves, had been a very faithful guardian of the captain's treasure. No one, not even himself, had gone near it, and he never went up to the rocky promontory on which he had raised his signal-pole without knowing that the two negroes were at a distance from the caves, or within his sight.

For a day or two after the captain's departure Edna was very quiet, with a fancy for going off by herself. But she soon threw off this dangerous disposition, and took up her old profession of teacher, with Ralph as the scholar, and mathematics as the study. They had no books nor even paper, but the rules and principles of her specialty were fresh in her mind, and with a pointed stick on a smooth stretch of sand diagrams were drawn and problems worked out.

This occupation was a most excellent thing for Edna and her brother, but it did not help Mrs. Cliff to 141