ned;
and Laddie said something more about sharks. But their older brother
paid little attention to them.

He had tied the cover down over the lifeboat again and he would not look
toward it, not even when Rose asked him what the matter was and if he
was going to leave all five of the castaways on the raft to starve and
be thirsty until luncheon time.

"I guess this isn't a very good place to play castaway, after all," said
Russ gravely. "And, anyway," he added, with sudden animation, "there's
the man with the gong. We'll have to run down and get cleaned up before
we go to the table."

"Dear me!" complained Laddie, "we never can have any fun. We always have
to stop and eat or go to bed, or something. Even on this ship we have
to."

Laddie thought that the most important thing in the world was play. Rose
watched Russ with a puzzled look. She felt that something had happened
that her brother did not want to talk about. Russ had a secret.

The latter did not even look again at the lifeboat as the little party
passed it on the way to the staterooms. But Russ Bunker's mind was fixed
upon that boat and what he had seen in it, just the same. He really
could not decide what to do. He was very much puzzled.

Even his mother and father noticed that Russ was rather silent at the
lunch table; but he said he was all right. He had something to think
about, he told them. Daddy and Mother Bunker looked at each other and
smiled. Russ had a way of thinking over things before he put his small
troubles before them, and they suspected that nothing much was the
matter.

But Rose whispered to her brother before they left the table.

"I think that isn't very polite, Russ Bunker."

Russ looked startled.

"What isn't polite?" he asked almost angrily.

"I saw you do that," she said, in the same admonishing way.

"Do what?" he demanded boldly.

"Put those rolls and the apple in your pocket. You wouldn't do that at
home."

"Well, we're not at home, are we?" he said. "You just keep still, Rose
Bunker."

Russ ran away directly after he had been excused from the table and they
did not find him again for quite a while. He appeared with his usual
cheerful whistle on his lips and made up a fine game of hide and seek on
the afterdeck. But it was noticeable, if anybody had thought to notice
it at all, that Russ kept them all from going near the lifeboat and the
raft, and he would not hear to their playing castaway at all.

"Why not?" as