Captain Salt in Oz

by Ruth Plumly Thompson

"True, quite true," agreed Samuel, squinting contentedly through his magnifying glass, while Tandy began sketching in the latest discovery on the sea chart. "I've written it all up in my journal and put down Peakenspire Island as able to accommodate a thousand settlers from Oz and as an especially good place for poets."

"Provided they are deaf," put in Ato, looking comically over his specs, "AYE DEE AYE DEE OH! While you fellows were aloft I got to yodeling so fast and furious I blew all the sauce pans off their hooks."

"Yes, that is one disadvantage," admitted Samuel, glancing approvingly at Tandy's picture of Alberif's Island, "but never mind, we don't have to live there, and think of the splendid specimens we've brought away, Mates!" Samuel ran his fingers lovingly through the heap of crystals and strands of metal Alberif had given him. "And those fruit and vegetable vines will provision us for the whole voyage."

"They're a great comfort to me, I assure you," muttered Ato, holding up his net to the light to see whether there were any more holes. "Now I know Kobo will never starve. I put a vegetable vine in a box on her raft and that leaves two for us, two for Ozma, and maybe Tandy would like to take the other two home with him?"

"Home?" Tandy swung round in positive dismay. "Oh—we're not near Ozamaland yet, are we, Captain?" His voice sounded so dismal Samuel Salt threw down his magnifying glass with a roar of merriment.

"Shiver my timbers, lad, one would think you did not wish to reach Ozamaland at all," he blustered teasingly. "What's the matter with that country of yours? You wouldn't keep an honest explorer from adding a creeping bird and a flying reptile to his collection, now would ye?"

"No! No! Of course not," answered Tandy quickly. "But perhaps it is farther away than you think, Master Salt, and perhaps the Greys have conquered the Whites and then I won't be King any more."

"What's this? What's this?" Ato lifted his nose like an old hound that has just scented a fox, for he loved a good story even better than he loved a good meal. "Who are the Greys and Whites, my lad? You never told us anything about this."

"There's really not much to tell," sighed Tandy, seating himself on a small stool before the fire. "In the first place, I suppose you know that the great continent of Tarara is divided into two large long countries? Ozamaland is on the East Coast and Amaland on the West Coast."