"There were always the cocoanuts, of course—and I've never been able to abide the taste of one since. Then there is, or was, a kind of oyster, too big to be eatable unless you were powerfully hungry. We got them by wading in the lagoon shallows. There are plenty of crabs, as you know; they would probably be good if they were cooked. But we of the Mary Jane had no fire. The lagoon is full of fish; some good for food, and some deadly. You try them and if you survive they are all right. If you don't survive, they are poisonous."
"How did you catch the fish?" Van Dyck wanted to know.
"We didn't catch many of them. A diet of raw fish doesn't appeal very strongly unless one is nearer starvation than we could be while the cocoanuts lasted."
"No edible roots?"
"None that we ever discovered; and, anyway, they wouldn't have been edible raw. But, say; we're missing something. How about those trussed-up pirates? Won't the professor's natural-science class stumble upon them and have a shock?"
At this question Van Dyck looked a trifle foolish.
"I thought we tied those fellows securely enough last night," he offered. "Didn't you?"
"I did, indeed. Are you trying to tell me that they've picked the locks?"
"They are not where we left them; that is one sure thing. I went out there early this morning, meaning to make them talk and tell me what's what on the Andromeda. They had disappeared."