“Indeed it is—the back-fin of one at least—and he must have heard you, for he seems impatient to join you in your little trip to the islands.”
“I’ll put it off to some future day, Dom. But isn’t it a pity that such pretty places should be spoiled by such greedy and cruel monsters?”
“And yet they must have been made for some good purpose,” suggested Pauline.
“I rather suspect,” said Dominick, “that if game and fish only knew who shoot and catch them, and afterwards eat them, they might be inclined to call man greedy and cruel.”
“But we can’t help that Dom. We must live, you know.”
“So says or thinks the shark, no doubt, when he swallows a man.”
While the abstruse question, to which the shark had thus given rise, was being further discussed, the explorers returned to the thicket, where they buried the skeleton beside the other graves. A close search was then made for any object that might identify the unfortunates or afford some clue to their history, but nothing of the sort was found.
“Strange,” muttered Dominick, on leaving the spot after completing their task. “One would have expected that, with a wrecked ship to fall back upon, they would have left behind them evidences of some sort—implements, or books, or empty beef-casks,—but there is literally nothing.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Pauline, “the men did not belong to this wreck. They may have landed as we have done out of a small boat, and the vessel we now see may have been driven here after they were dead.”
“True, Pina, it may have been so. However, the matter must remain a mystery for the present. Meanwhile we will go and explore the low land behind our reef.”