y nothing to
his companions about the events of the night.

Having failed to find any tracks round the Wondership, he started off
through the trees on his hunt. He was traversing a small glade when,
in a clump of flowering bushes, he heard a sudden scuffling noise.

Startled, he stopped. The sound came again and this time it was
accompanied by a shrill scream as of some creature in pain. Jack
parted the bushes and made his way through them. On the other side he
came across a rabbit. The little creature was struggling violently and
squealing with the peculiarly human screech that rabbits have when in
pain.

The boy saw that it had been caught in some way and could not get
away. Greatly mystified, he dropped to his knees beside it and the
next instant solved the puzzle.

The rabbit was caught in a trap ingeniously made from pliable willow
twigs and set in a "rabbit run." For a minute the full significance of
his discovery did not dawn upon Jack. Then it came like a bolt from
the blue.

Somebody on the island, other than themselves, had set that trap!
Perhaps it was the strange, half-ape-like man he had seen by the
Wondership the night before. The boy looked round him in the silent
wood as if he half expected to see somebody watching him.

He was not afraid, but he felt that creepy feeling that accompanies
the mysterious. Suddenly he recollected that he had left his rifle
behind when he plunged into the bushes.

He remembered this when the desire came to him to put the rabbit out
of its misery. It had been caught by the hind leg and had wrenched it
out of joint in its frantic struggles to get free. Jack made his way
back to where he had left his rifle. But when he got back to the trap
ready to end the poor creature's life, the rabbit was not there!

The trap was empty!

Then he looked about him. The ground was covered with blood and fur
as if the rabbit had been torn to pieces.

"Some animal," was his first thought. Then, on examining the trap, he
found that the thong which had ensnared the rabbit had not been broken
or torn loose as would have been the case had some wild creature
pounced on the rabbit and dragged it off.

It had been untied!

Jack had just made this discovery when he noticed something fluttering
from a thornbush. He was sure it had not been there before, for he had
noted the surroundings of the trap carefully. He examined the object
that had caught his attention. It was a bit of canvas, se