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LOST ISLAND

him, especially when his two three dollars were gone, and then he'd begin to pine for something really exciting again, like the fight he had with that twelve-pound fish yesterday."

"Never mind him, Jim," Dave said. "You come to Christmas Island with us, and after that I 'll take you to Hoboken, where you can ride about in trolley-cars in a tall silk hat with feathers in it if you like. Will you come?"

Jim shrugged his shoulders and extended his hands—a gesture with which he always expressed agreement.

As the days drifted on, and Dave and Tempest grew to know their island home better, they came to the conclusion that there were worse things than being shipwrecked under such conditions. As a rule the cooking was done by Dave, he being the accepted expert, but in the hunting and fishing they all three joined, and they obtained much excellent sport. Jim, with a native's cunning in the chase, devised various methods of

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