XIV
MR. TUBBS INTERRUPTS
I had determined as an offset to my pusillanimous behavior about
the cave to show a dogged industry in the matter of the _Island
Queen_. It would take me a long while to get down through the sand
to the chest, but I resolved to accomplish it, and borrowed of
Cookie, without his knowledge, a large iron spoon which I thought I
could wield more easily than a heavy spade. Besides, Cookie would
be less sleuth-like in getting on the trail of his missing property
than Mr. Shaw--though there would be a certain piquancy in having
that martinet hale me before him for stealing a spade.
But that afternoon I was tired and hot--it really called for a
grimmer resolve than mine to shovel sand through the languor of a
Leeward Island afternoon. Instead, I slept in my hammock, and
dreamed that I was queen of a cannibal island, draped in necklaces
made of the doubloons now hidden under the sand in the cabin of the
derelict.
Later, the wailing of Cookie was heard in the land, and I had to
restore the spoon to free Crusoe of the charge of having stolen it.
I said I had wanted it to dig with. But of course it occurred to
no one that it was the treasure I had expected to dig up with
Cookie's spoon. It was touching to see the universal faith in the
trivial nature of my employments, to know that every one imagined
themselves to be seriously occupied, while I was merely a
girl--there is no common denominator for the qualifying
adjective--who roamed about idly with a dog, and that no one
dreamed that we had thus come to be potentially among the richest
dogs and girls in these latitudes.
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