"Sit down here," said Kernel Cob, "and I'll see if I can find something for dinner." And he went along the beach.
After he had walked a long distance, he found a tree with some nuts on it, and he picked a lot of them and put them in his hat and started back to Sweetclover.
You may imagine his astonishment when he reached the spot where he had left her and discovered that she was not there.
But, all about on the sand, he saw foot-prints as of a great number of bare footed people.
"The savages have taken her," he muttered, and drawing his sword he ran off in the direction they had taken.
Through the woods he ran, and pretty soon he came to a clearing and there was Sweetclover surrounded by about a thousand savages shouting and dancing and waving spears above their heads. And Kernel Cob grasped his sword firmly in his hand and ran at them, and, so fiercely did he fight, that in a minute he had driven away about a hundred of them. And he would have driven them all away, but his foot slipped and, before he could get up again, he was overpowered and bound hand and foot.
And they brought him before their chief who was a great giant.
And when it was night, the savages tied the two captives to trees and went to sleep about a great fire. And in the middle of the night when Kernel Cob was thinking of some way in which to make their escape, he heard something stirring in the grass at his feet.
"Who's that?" he whispered.
"Tommy Hare," was the reply, and he ran out from a stone behind which he had been hiding.