"Hurray!" said Tommy, beginning to dance. "Let's go and get the grasses; by the time we have got enough to make our mats it will be supper-time. Oh! I am so glad you are not ill, Bess."
They spent an hour or two in gathering grasses, and returned to their little camp shortly before sunset, in order to cook their supper before dark. Tommy ran to the hole in the rock where the fish had been left. A cry of dismay startled her sisters.
"What is it?" they cried, turning towards her.
"It's gone, every bit of it; oh, who has stolen it?"
She looked round with alarm in her eyes, and the other girls also glanced about them with consternation and anxiety. Was it possible that some one had been spying on them?
"I did see somebody that day," said Tommy in a whisper.
"But who would want to steal a bit of fish?" said Elizabeth, with practical common-sense. "If there are natives here, they could fish for themselves, I'm sure."
"There aren't any cats in these parts, are there, Mary?" asked Tommy.
"I never read of them. But—good gracious!" she cried suddenly, "there are the bones!"
She had looked a little farther into the hole than Tommy had done, and there lay the skeleton of the fish picked clean of every bit of flesh.