No Trespassing.
The boys looked at this sign in astonishment.
“By order of the chief of police,” murmured Chet, with a grin.
“Looks as if somebody has been here before,” Biff observed.
“Perhaps somebody just put up the sign for a joke. Let’s take a peep inside.”
Frank advanced toward the cave.
But at the entrance he paused. He peered into the gloomy beyond and then turned back to his companions.
“The sign isn’t a joke,” he said quietly. “Somebody lives here!”
“Lives there!” ejaculated Chet incredulously.
“Come and see for yourself.”
Curiously, the lads crowded into the entrance of the cave. They saw at a glance that Frank was right. In the gloomy interior of the cave they could see a crude table, a mattress with blankets, and on a ledge of rock was an improvised cupboard consisting of an old soap box. That the cave had only been recently tenanted they saw by the fact that the box held some canned goods and some other provisions that had certainly not been there long.
“Well, I’ll be switched!” declared Joe. “We have a neighbor.”
“We certainly have. And if I’m not mistaken, here he comes now.”
Frank was looking down the beach. The others turned.
“What a queer duck he is!” exclaimed Biff.
“I’ll say he is!” ejaculated Chet Morton. “Where do they get ’em like that?”
Coming around a jutting promontory of rock was a queer old man, clad in fisherman’s garb, with a huge straw hat on his head. He had not seen them as yet. He was singing, in a high-pitched voice, and even at that distance they could make out the words:
“I’m Captain Royal, of the King’s Navee,
And I want two lumps of sugar in my tea.”
XV
The Old Sailor
Having concluded this verse, the strange old man elevated one arm above his head and danced a couple of steps of a sailor’s hornpipe. In the middle of this he caught sight of the boys, and came to an abrupt stop.
“Ahoy!” he shouted.
“Ahoy!” cried Chet promptly.
The man in the straw hat advanced.
“When did you come ashore?”
“Just this morning.”
The old man drew closer. He was an odd figure, in the flopping straw hat, with oilskins much too big for him, and as he came up to the mouth of the cave he looked closely at the lads, then smiled and extended his hand.
“I’m Captain Royal,” he announced. “You should have saluted, but I guess you didn’t know.”
To make up for this breach of etiquette, the boys saluted, and this appeared to gratify the old gentleman immensely.
“You’re landlubbers, eh?”
“I suppose so,” admitted Frank, with a smile.
“Well, we can’t all be sailors. It isn’t often people come to see me.”
“Do you live here?” asked Joe, indicating the cave.
“This is where I live when I’m ashore. I’m resting up between cruises just now.”
The old man sat down on the sand and fanned himself with the straw hat, for it was a warm morning and the sun was strong. The boys looked at him curiously. In spite of his garb, he did not look like a seafaring man; his skin was tanned, it is true, but it was not the deep, mahogany tan of one who has lived for years in many climes. His voice was high-pitched and his expression was mild. But the boys were old enough to know that one cannot always judge by appearances.
“What are your names?” asked the old man.
The lads introduced themselves.
“Glad to meet you,” returned Captain Royal. “It ain’t often I have visitors. I get used to being alone.”
“It’s lonely enough here,” agreed Frank.
“It isn’t bad. Not half as lonely as the time I got marooned in the South Seas.”
The boys looked at him with new interest.
“You were marooned?”
“Aye. It was when I was in charge of a destroyer cruising the South Seas a good many years ago. We landed for water on a little island that you won’t find on any of the maps. It was a hot day—very hot. Must have been over a hundred degrees in the shade. So while my men were loading the water on my boat I sat down in the shade of a cactus tree. Before I knew it, I was asleep.”
“And they went away and left you?”
“They did.”
“But you were the captain!”
“I guess they thought I was in my cabin, and of course none of ’em dared disturb me. When I woke up, the ship was gone.”
“Gosh!” exclaimed Biff.
“Well, sir, I didn’t know what to do. I was like this here fellow Robinson Crusoe, that you read about. But I had to make the best of it, so I fixed myself up a little house and I lived there for nearly six months, all by myself.”
“Didn’t the boat come back for you?”
“They couldn’t find the island again. It wasn’t marked on the maps. The engineer couldn’t set a course back to the island. Anyway, the quartermaster who took charge of the schooner after they found I was gone, didn’t want to find me, I guess. He wanted my job.”
“How did you find anything to eat when you were on the island?”
“Oh, there was lots to eat. Coconuts and prunes and bananas and grapefruit and figs and all sorts of fruit. There was plenty of mud-turtles on the island, so I had mock turtle soup whenever I wanted it. I tell you, I lived high. Once in a while I had my little troubles, of course, and two or three times I had some mighty narrow escapes. There was a rhinoceros came after me once.”
“A rhinoceros!”
“Aye! He swam up to the island one day. I was just in for my morning swim when I saw his big ears flapping and heard him give a roar. I tell you, I was scared. He came surging through the waves and up on the beach and he chased me clean up a pineapple tree. I had to stay there for three days until he went away, and I had nothing but pineapples to eat. I was never so sick
