"As far away from the skeleton, please, as possible," said Otto.

"Surely you don't suppose it can hurt you?" said Pauline.

"N-no, of course not, but it would be unpleasant to have it for a
bedfellow, you know; so, the further away from it the better."

As he spoke they emerged from the thicket, at the end opposite to the
spot where they had entered, and had their spirits again powerfully
cheered by coming suddenly into a blaze of sunshine, for the bright orb
of day was descending at that side of the islet, and his red,
resplendent rays were glowing on the reef and on the palm-trees.

They also came in full view of the islet beyond, which, they now
perceived, was of considerable size, and covered with vegetation, but,
as Dominick had suspected, separated completely from the reef or outer
isle on which they stood by a deep lagoon.

"Splendid!" exclaimed Pauline.

"As I feared," muttered Dominick, "and no means of reaching it."

"Pooh! Didn't Robinson Crusoe make rafts?" said Otto; "at least if he
didn't, somebody else did, and anyhow _we_ can."

"Come, let us continue our walk," said Dominick. "You don't fully
appreciate the loss of our boat Otto. Don't you see that, even if we do
build a raft, it will at best be a clumsy thing to manage, and heavy to
pull, slow to sail, and bad to steer, and if we should chance to be on
it when a stiff breeze springs up from the land, we should probably be
driven out to sea and lost--or separated, if Pina should chance to have
been left on shore at the time."

"What a fellow you are, Dom, for supposing chances and difficulties, and
fancying they cannot be overcome," returned Otto, with the pert
self-sufficiency that characterised him. "For my part I rather enjoy
difficulties, because of the fun of overcoming them. Don't you see, we
three can make quite sure of never being separated by never going out on
our raft except together, so that we shall always enjoy ourselves
unitedly, or perish in company. Then we can easily get over the
difficulty of being blown out to sea, by never going on the sea at all,
but confining ourselves entirely to the lagoon, which is large enough
for any reasonable man, and may be larger than we think, for we can't
see the whole of it from where we stand. Then, as to sailing and rowing
slowly, we can overcome these difficulties by not being in a hurry,--
taking things easy, you know."

To this Dominick replied that there was one difficulty wh