pink sugar on the white icing and two large cherries in the middle, because Vicky was two years old. Then there was a cold chicken. Then there was a salad in a big pudding-basin. Then there was an enormous gooseberry tart. Then there was a melon. Then there was a really huge bunch of bananas which the female native tied in a tree as if it was growing there. “You can pick them just as you want them,” she said.
Then there were more ordinary stores, a tin of golden syrup, two big pots of marmalade and a great tin of squashed-fly biscuits. Squashed-fly biscuits are those flat biscuits with currants in them, just the thing for explorers. Then there were three bunloaves and six bottles of ginger beer.
“Hurrah for the grog,” said Titty.
“But where are the presents?” said Roger.
“I told you they were very little ones,” said the female native. “Here they are.”
She dug down at the bottom of the hamper and brought up four small brown paper parcels, each about as big as an ordinary envelope and as fat as a matchbox.
“The nights are getting very dark now,” she said, “with no moon, so I thought perhaps you could do with some electric torches. You mustn’t keep them lit for long at a time or they’ll soon wear out. But for signalling, or looking for something in the dark. …”
“Mother,” cried Captain John, “how did you guess we were wanting them? They’ve come exactly at the right moment.”
The others were flashing their torches at once, but they were not much good in the sunlight. Roger and Titty went into the mate’s tent and crawled under the groundsheet to get some darkness.