"AH-AH!" CRIED THE ITALIAN, "YOU TRY-A TO STEAL-A DA MONK!"
He rushed toward the girl holding the monkey. The animal chattered angrily and cowered in Laura's arms.
"Hold on," said Chet, stepping forward. "Nobody's stealing your monkey, and don't you say we are. He was up the tree there and my sister got him down for you. I reckon if you treated him half decently he wouldn't run away from you."
"You! Ha!" sputtered Tony. "You one o' dem fresh boys, eh? Give-a me da monk!"
"Let him have the creature, Laura," said Chet.
"He'll beat him. See how frightened poor Bébé is!"
"Can't help it," said her brother. "He belongs to the dago——"
"Calla me da dago, too!" stammered the angry Italian. "I fix-a you for dis!" and he shook his fist at Chet.
"Come on and do your fixing right now," advised the big boy, easily. "You won't find me as easy as Bébé, I bet you!"
"You 'Merican boys and girls want to steal my monk—want-a spoil-a da act!" cried Tony. He grabbed Bébé out of Laura's arms, although the monkey shrieked his protest at the exchange. But Tony did not beat the little beast, and it clung to him with one arm around Tony's neck while it finished the apple.
"You ought to thank us for finding your monkey for you," said Lance Darby, in disgust.
Tony growled something in Italian and started off up the side of the hollow. Before he got out of sight he was joined by a man who stepped out of hiding in a clump of brush.
"Did you see that?" cried Lance, eagerly, in Chefs ear. "There's another of 'em here."
"Another monkey?" laughed Chet.
But Dora whispered to Dorothy: "That man has whiskers. Do you suppose he is our lone pirate?"
"I'd like to see this piratical individual you girls are talking about," laughed Laura, who was nearest to the Lockwood twins.
At that moment Lance and Chet were walking back toward the entrance to the cave.
"Say, old man," Lance asked his chum, "what were you searching that chamber in the cavern for? What did you expect to find?"
"I don't know that I expected to find anything," answered Chetwood Belding. "But I'll show you what I did find," and he drew from his pocket an old knife and placed it in Lance's hand.
The latter turned it over, and whistled under his breath. "I ought to know this old toad-stabber," he said. "Broken corkscrew—yes; small blade broken short off, too. Why, Chet, that's Short and Long's knife!"
"That's right."
"And you mean to say you picked it up in the cavern?"
"Right in that place where somebody had been camping," declared his chum. "But don't say anything about it. We can't do anything toward finding him with all these girls about. But, later——"
"You bet!" agreed Lance.
So the boys rather hurried the departure of the crowd for the place where the boats had been left, and where they had lunched. The walk through the cove did not take long, and the party, happy and laughing, crowded out upon the shore of the cove in front of the subterranean passage.
Instantly one of the twins drew the attention of all by uttering a startled little scream.
"What's the matter with you—er—Sister?" demanded the other Lockwood girl, with a chuckle.
"That wasn't the man we saw with Tony!" declared the girl who had cried out.
"What man?"
"The pirate," said the twin.
"How do you know?" demanded Laura, laughing.
"For I just saw him again. And he couldn't have gotten through the cave ahead of us."
"There are prowlers about," declared Chet to Lance.
"What sort of a looking man, Miss Lockwood?" demanded Lance.
"Oh, he's all bushy black whiskers and hair. I only saw the upper part of his body again. He dodged down behind that boulder yonder."
"Say! the other cave opening is over there," cried Bobby Hargrew.
"And that's a fact," admitted Chet.
"Let's see if the boats are all right," cried Lance, starting on a run for the landing.
"And the rest of the lunch, dear boy!" cried Prettyman Sweet, following him. "Weally, if that has been stolen it is a calamity."