"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——"