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 from being out with me. I—I think I need to hug you awfully tight."

"And now for the treasure, mate!" said Garth blithely.

She raised her head and looked up at him, silhouetted against the sky. Her handkerchief was still bound about his forehead in a fashion truly piratical; an eager expectancy shone in his eyes. She pulled herself together and smiled.

"Stay you here, Captain," she advised in Ben Bobstay's peculiar voice, "whilst I scout ahead a bit. There's no telling the savages there may be here, nor the beasts. Stay you and stand guard over the camp till I come back."

She gathered up the steamer-rug, which seemed suspiciously bulky, and marched off up the beach.

"Is your cutlass loose in the scabbard?" Garth called after her.

"Ay, ay, sir, that it is!" cried Joan, as she vanished around the projecting rocks.

Trasket was even smaller than Hy Brasail, and no flowers brightened its rough coat of sod. The bluff did not rise straight from the beach, but sloped gently, the sand meeting the thick,