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.

A more serious obstacle to my explorations on the Island Queen presented itself next day.  Instead of putting to sea, Mr. Shaw and Captain Magnus hauled the boat up on the beach and set to work to repair it.  The wild work of exploring the coast had left the boat with leaky seams and a damaged gunwale.  The preceding day had been filled with hardship and danger—­so much so that my heart sank a little at the recountal of it.  You saw the little boat threading its way among the reefs, tossed like seaweed by the white teeth of gnawing waves, screamed at by angry gulls whose homes were those clefts and caves which the boat invaded.  And all this, poor little boat, on a hopeless quest—­for no reward but peril and wounds.  Captain Magnus had a bruised and bleeding wrist, but refused to have it dressed, vaunting his hardihood with a savage pride.  Cuthbert Vane, however, had a sprained thumb which could not be ignored, and on the strength of which he was dismissed from the boat-repairing contingent, and thrown on my hands to entertain.  So of course I had to renounce all thoughts of visiting the sloop.  I should not have dared to go there anyway, with Mr. Shaw and the captain able more or less to overlook my motions from the beach, for I was quite morbidly afraid of attracting attention to the derelict.  It seemed to me a happy miracle that no one but myself had taken any interest in her, or been inspired to ask by what chance so small a boat had come to be wrecked upon these desolate shores.  Fortunately in her position in the shadow of the cliff she was inconspicuous, so that she might easily have been taken for the half of a large boat instead of the whole of a small one, or she must before this have drawn the questioning notice of the Scotchman.  As to the captain, his attention was all set on the effort to discover the cave, and his intelligence was not lively enough to start on an entirely new tack by itself.  And the Honorable Cuthbert viewed derelicts as he viewed the planetary bodies; somehow in the course of nature they happened.