o islands. He walked all day, and once when he met a
fisherman and asked him about Wild Island, the fisherman began to
shake and couldn't talk for a long while. It scared him that much,
just thinking about it. Finally he said, "Many people have tried to
explore Wild Island, but not one has come back alive. We think they
were eaten by the wild animals." This didn't bother my father. He kept
walking and slept on the beach again that night.

It was beautifully clear the next day, and way down the shore my
father could see a long line of rocks leading out into the ocean, and
way, way out at the end he could just see a tiny patch of green. He
quickly ate seven tangerines and started down the beach.

It was almost dark when he came to the rocks, but there, way out in
the ocean, was the patch of green. He sat down and rested a while,
remembering that the cat had said, "If you can, go out to the island
at night, because then the wild animals won't see you coming along the
rocks and you can hide when you get there." So my father picked seven
more tangerines, put on his black rubber boots, and waited for dark.

It was a very black night and my father could hardly see the rocks
ahead of him. Sometimes they were quite high and sometimes the waves
almost covered them, and they were slippery and hard to walk on.
Sometimes the rocks were far apart and my father had to get a running
start and leap from one to the next.

After a while he began to hear a rumbling noise. It grew louder and
louder as he got nearer to the island. At last it seemed as if he was
right on top of the noise, and he was. He had jumped from a rock onto
the back of a small whale who was fast asleep and cuddled up between
two rocks. The whale was snoring and making more noise than a steam
shovel, so it never heard my father say, "Oh, I didn't know that was
you!" And it never knew my father had jumped on its back by mistake.

[Illustration]

For seven hours my father climbed and slipped and leapt from rock to
rock, but while it was still dark he finally reached the very last
rock and stepped off onto Wild Island.

[Illustration]

_Chapter Four_

MY FATHER FINDS THE RIVER

The jungle began just beyond a narrow strip of beach; thick, dark,
damp, scary jungle. My father hardly knew where to go, so he crawled
under a wahoo bush to think, and ate eight tangerines. The first thing
to do, he decided, was to find the river, because the dragon was tied
so