"My camera!" said Tom, his face a picture of horror. "My camera—with all those pictures I took! I left it in the store-cave."
"Left it in the store-cave!" said everyone. "Whatever for?"
"Well, I was afraid I'd bump it against the rocks, carrying it up and down those passages," said Tom. "So I took it off for a minute, meaning to put it on when we went. And I forgot."
"You fathead! "said Jill.
"Don't call me that," said poor Tom, looking almost ready to cry.
"Well, fathead is too good a name," said Mary. "Thin head would be better. You can't possibly have go my brains if you do a thing like that, so you must be a thinhead with no brains at all."
Tom went very red. He blinked his eyes and swallowed a lump that had-suddenly come into his throat. He knew how valuable the pictures were that he had taken. How could he have come to forget his camera like that?
"Cheer up, Tom," said Andy. "I know what you feel like. I felt just like that when I found I'd forgotten to bring the anchor in the ship. It's awful."
Tom was grateful to Andy for not scolding him. But all the same he felt really dreadful. They had gone to such a lot of trouble to get those photographs-and now all because of his carelessness they had been left behind.
"I vote we have something to eat," said Andy, thinking that would cheer Tom up. But it didn't. For once in a way Tom had no appetite at all. He couldn't eat a thing. He sat nearby looking gloomily at the others.