He looked over at Amory with troubled eyes.

“As host of this picnic,” he said, “I dare say I ought to stay aboard and let you fellows—­but I’m hanged if I will.”

Little Cawthorne reflected, frowning; and you could as well have expected a bird to frown as Little Cawthorne.  It was rather the name of his expression than a description of it.

“Suppose,” he said, “that Bennietod and I sit rocking here in this bay—­if it is a bay—­while you two rest your chins on the top of that ledge of rock up there, and look over.  And about to-morrow or day after we two will venture up behind you, or you could send one of the men back—­”

“My thunder,” said Bennietod wistfully, “ain’t I goin’ to get to climb in de pantry window at de palace—­nor fire out of a loophole—­”

“Bennietod an’ I couldn’t talk to a prince anyway,” said Little Cawthorne; “we’d get our language twisted something dizzy, and probably tell him ‘yes, ma’am.’”

St. George’s eyes softened as he looked at the little man.  He knew well enough what it cost him to make the suggestion, which the good sense of them all must approve.  Not only did Little Cawthorne always sacrifice himself, which is merely good breeding, but he made opportunities to do so, which is both well-bred and virtuous.  When Rollo came up with the oil-skins they told him what had been decided, and Rollo, the faithful, the expressionless, dropped his eyelids, but he could not banish from his voice the wistfulness that he might have been one to stay behind.

“Sometimes it is best for a person to change his mind, sir,” was his sole comment.

Presently the little green dory drew away from The Aloha, and they left her lying as much at her ease as if the phantom island before her were in every school-boy’s geography, with a scale of miles and a list of the principal exports attached.

“If we had diving dresses, adon,” Jarvo suggested, “we might have gone down through the sluice and entered by the lagoon where the submarines pass.”

“Jove,” said Amory, trying to row and adjust his pince-nez at the same time, “Chillingworth will never forgive us for missing that.”

“You couldn’t have done it,” shouted Little Cawthorne derisively, from the deck of the yacht, “you didn’t wear your rubbers.  If anybody sticks a knife in you send up a r-r-r-ocket!”

The landing, effected with the utmost caution, was upon a flat stone already a few inches submerged by the rising tide.  Looking up at the jagged, beetling world above them their task appeared hopeless enough.  But Jarvo found footing in an instant, and St. George and Amory pressed closely behind him, Rollo and little Akko silently bringing up the rear and carrying the oil-skins.  Slowly and cautiously as they made their way it was but a few minutes until the three standing on the deck, and Barnay open-mouthed in the dory, saw the sinuous line of the five bodies twist up the tortuous course considerably above the blazoned emblem of the White Blade.