ask had prepared.

"Don't stir it," said Trask. "Let it get good and sizzling."

"Yo' goin' cook de whole islan' in a fry pan?" asked Doc.

"If there's a hundred dollars' worth of gold in a bushel of sand,
don't you think it would pay?" asked Trask, as he went out.

"Some cookin'!" declared Doc.

Trask now searched Jarrow's cabin in the hope of finding some sort
of firearm, but there was neither pistol nor rifle. So he took the
captain's spy-glass, a cumbersome, old-fashioned tube, and went on
the poop deck to look the island over.

But the only living thing in sight was Dinshaw, busy scooping up
sand with his hands, and building what appeared to be sand forts.
The old man was working out near the point, close to the water's
edge, piling up sand like a harvester getting ready for the work of
gathering a crop. Mound after mound he made, in a long furrow on a
line with the shore, just above the rim of the tide.

"I believe he is crazy," said Marjorie, as she looked through the
glass. "Can it be possible he thinks that sand is gold?"

"That's been my suspicion for quite awhile," said Trask.

Locke began to laugh. "We are the prize boobs," he said, "if we've
come here because a cracked old man thinks a beach is solid gold.
We might have known he was out from the way he talked."

"Anyway, it's lots of fun," asserted Marjorie. "Think of it! A real
mutiny, a lunatic, sand that's supposed to be gold----"

"Marge, you're a hard-shell optimist," chided her father. "Don't
you realize that we're in danger? That a storm, or a dozen things
would----"

"I rather enjoy it, Dad. I've always wanted to do something that
was more exciting than playing tennis. I'm glad I came."

Trask looked at her and grinned. As she stood against the rail,
spying out the land through an ancient glass, seeking some sign of
a crew of piratical tendencies, he couldn't help thinking that this
slender young woman with the yellow hair coiled under a canvas hat
really was thrilled by the possibility of danger.

"By George! You do like it!" he said, admiringly.

"I'm only a little bit scared," she confessed.

"Mr. Trask, yo' better take a look at this mess," Doc called up the
companion. He betrayed his suppressed excitement in his voice, and
when Trask went down, followed by the others, the steward's hands
were trembling and his eyes snapping with the spirit of discovery
which possessed him. He might have been a scientist making a test
which p