“I’m glad we live on Wild Cat Island and not here,” said Roger.
“This is a real desert island,” said Titty. “Keep a lookout for a skeleton.”
“Here are lots of bones,” said Roger a minute or two later.
“Real bones?” called Titty.
“Little ones,” said Roger.
Titty climbed round a rock to where Roger was standing looking down at a little heap of white fishbones. She looked up at once and, sure enough, there was a small hole in the rocks above them, a hole big enough for a tennis ball to go into. The hole was splashed with greenish white, and so was the rock below it. Titty reached up towards it, but just at that moment something flew out with fast-moving down-turned wings, flashing brilliant blue in the sunlight.
“It’s the kingfisher’s nest,” she said. “Those are the bones of the minnows he’s eaten. Not pirate bones at all.”
They went on with the search. There were many more bones on Cormorant Island, but they were all fishbones. When the boy and able-seaman scrambled along to the tree where the cormorants always perched, they found plenty of them, lying under it. But the rocks there were so dirty, and the smell there was so bad, that they were glad to get away. And they found no sign of anything that might be treasure.
Roger began to lose heart, and also to feel hungry. They sat down on the flat rock at the north end of the island where they had left their provisions. They got the bottle of milk out of Swallow , ate their sandwiches and took turns in bubbling the milk out of the bottle into their mouths.
“There’s Captain Flint and the others,” said Titty. “They’re all in his boat. Over there. Not in Shark Bay. In the little bay we passed when we