Soulful were the wails of Purt Sweet. Not a crumb of food left in the girls' hampers when the party set out through the cave for the middle of Cavern Island was now left to appease Mr. Sweet's appetite.
"The lone pirate has done his fell work, sure enough," Laura Belding declared. "And how hungry he must have been, Nellie! He took that pie you made that none of us could eat."
They all laughed at this hit, for the doctor's daughter was not much of a pastry cook and her lemon pie had been voted the booby prize at luncheon.
"Ooh!" gasped Bobby. "Do you suppose it will kill him? Maybe it will give him such a terrible case of indigestion that he will steal a boat, raise the Jolly Roger again, and go to work making people walk the plank and all that sort of thing—and it will be your fault, Nellie Agnew!"
"I'm only afraid he will eat it and die in terrible agony all alone here," wailed Nellie, who could take a joke as well as give one. "And then his ghost will haunt this end of the island——"
"And Otto will never come here again," said Eve Sitz, poking fun at her brother, who had once been very much afraid of a supposed "haunt" in an old house in Robinson's Woods.
"Never you mind," growled her brother. "There iss ha'ants, undt you will findt oudt so some day—yes!"
But Chet and Lance decided that there were altogether too many prowlers at this end of the island for the party to remain longer. Had they been alone, or with the other boys and no girls, they would surely have made an attempt to find the bewhiskered man whom the Lockwood twins had twice seen disappear into the far entrance of the caverns.
"We ought to report him to the park police," said Nellie Agnew. "He may steal something more than food, next time."
"Leave that to us," said Chet, hastily. "Lance and I will report it in proper time."