lready."

"Who are they?" asked Hal.

"How about those sophomores who kidnapped your cousin and marooned
him here?"

"Oh, they're only play villains," Cub put in disdainfully.

"How do you know they wouldn't do something worse than haze freshmen?"

"I don't; but until they do they're just play villains, and that doesn't
interest me."

"I see," Mr. Perry observed; "you want people to be either very good or
very bad."

"No," Cub returned slowly. "I wouldn't put it that way; I don't want
anybody to be bad at all; but the fact of the matter is there are lots of
good people in the world and a good many bad."

"And to make a good story you think it is necessary to bring good people
and bad people together, eh?"

"Well, that's what makes fireworks, isn't it?"

"Oh, ho, I get you now," said Mr. Perry. "You're fond of
spectacular things."

"No, I wouldn't put it that way," Cub replied; "but I don't like to see
anybody make a bluff at anything and not make good. Now, we've started
out with a glorious bluff at some very clever rascality, and it looks as
if it's going to prove to be just an ordinary hazing affair."

"It looks to me like a very extraordinary affair, whether it was hazing
or not," returned his father.

"And you think we'll find a villain if we investigate it to the end?"

"Why, sure," Mr. Perry smiled. "I shouldn't be surprised if we'd find
Captain Kidd's treasure buried on this island."

"Now you're joking," Bud put in.

"What kind of mathematics would you use to locate that treasure?" Hal
inquired with a kind of jovial challenge.

"Cube root," was the reply.

"That means dig at the roots of a four-cornered tree and you'll find a
box of pieces of eight shaped like a gambler's dice," Cub inferred.

"That's pretty good imagination, and, I think ought to put us in a frame
of mind well suited for further investigation," said Mr. Perry. "Now
let's go to the spot where Hal found that diary of his cousin and see if
we can't discover something more of significant interest."

CHAPTER XV

The Hook-Up on Shore

Arrived at the open area where Hal had found his cousin's "Crusoe diary",
the three boys and Mr. Perry began a careful examination of the
surroundings for further evidence that might throw light on the strange
affair, which, for the time at least, appeared to defy the mystery
scoffer's "mathematics".

First they scrutinized every foot of ground where the grass had been
trampled so