“I hope it isn’t a whale,” said Sweetclover.

“It had better not be,” said Kernel Cob, “if he knows what’s good for him,” and he patted his sword in a very brave manner.

“It’s getting bigger and bigger,” said Sweetclover.  “Don’t you see it?”

“Sure!” said Kernel Cob, “I saw it all the time, it’s a ship.”  And like all people who tell fibs he was found out, for it wasn’t a ship at all.

“It’s land!” said Sweetclover, joyfully, and sure enough it was, for soon you could see the trees.  And as they sailed closer the trees grew taller and taller, and after a while you could see the shore.

“It’s a little island,” said Sweetclover.

“What’s an island?” asked Kernel Cob.

“Didn’t you ever go to school?” asked Sweetclover.

“No, but I wish I had.”

But Kernel Cob didn’t answer.  He just steered the shoeboat toward the shore by putting one leg over the side as if it were a rudder, and in a little while they ran the boat up on the shore and Sweetclover hopped out and Kernel Cob pulled the boat up on the beach so the tide, when it came in, wouldn’t take it out to sea again.

And they walked along the beach.

“I’m very hungry,” said Sweetclover.

“Sit down here,” said Kernel Cob, “and I’ll see if I can find something for dinner.”  And he went along the beach.

After he had walked a long distance, he found a tree with some nuts on it, and he picked a lot of them and put them in his hat and started back to Sweetclover.

You may imagine his astonishment when he reached the spot where he had left her and discovered that she was not there.

But, all about on the sand, he saw foot-prints as of a great number of bare footed people.

“The savages have taken her,” he muttered, and drawing his sword he ran off in the direction they had taken.

Through the woods he ran, and pretty soon he came to a clearing and there was Sweetclover surrounded by about a thousand savages shouting and dancing and waving spears above their heads.  And Kernel Cob grasped his sword firmly in his hand and ran at them, and, so fiercely did he fight, that in a minute he had driven away about a hundred of them.  And he would have driven them all away, but his foot slipped and, before he could get up again, he was overpowered and bound hand and foot.

And they brought him before their chief who was a great giant.

And when it was night, the savages tied the two captives to trees and went to sleep about a great fire.  And in the middle of the night when Kernel Cob was thinking of some way in which to make their escape, he heard something stirring in the grass at his feet.

“Who’s that?” he whispered.

“Tommy Hare,” was the reply, and he ran out from a stone behind which he had been hiding.

“Good for you!” said Kernel Cob.  “Come stand up on your hind legs, like a good fellow, and untie me from this tree.”