then how the pirates sank their prize and sailed on to capture another, to be emptied and sunk in the same way. She told him how, when the pirate ship was so crammed with treasure that there wasn’t room for dancing on the decks and the pirates could hardly get into their own cabins when they wanted to go to sleep, they sailed to an island and buried all the treasure in a safe place. She told him how they made a chart so that they could come and find the treasure when they were tired of pirating and wanted to retire and live in a house by the seashore, where they could spend their days looking out to sea with a telescope and thinking of the wicked things they had done. (“Or live in a houseboat, like Captain Flint,” said Roger.) She told him how the pirates always, or nearly always, lost the chart and how the treasure-seekers (“That’s you and me”) sometimes found the treasure instead of the pirates. She told him how sometimes the pirates fought among themselves till none were left, so that nobody knew where the treasure was. (“But we know, because I heard them putting it there.”) She was still talking about it when they heard Susan calling from the camp and, paddling back to the island, put on their shoes and stockings and ran to the camp for tea.
Just when they were finishing washing up after a tea that had been very native, probably because Susan was still not feeling happy about having let them stay up until morning, Captain John came home.
His first words were, “I told mother about our being out all last night and not coming home till today.”
“Was she very upset about it?” said Susan.
“I think she was rather, inside. But she hid it, and it’s all right now. Only, I’ve promised not to do it again.”
After that, Susan cheered up and became much less like a native and more like a mate.