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Captain Royal
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out for a few minutes but when I came to, I began to shout."

"A few minutes!" exclaimed Chet. "We've been hunting for you over an hour."

Frank looked incredulous.

"An hour! Why, I thought I had been unconscious only a little while."

The others then told him of the search they had made and of their anxiety on his account. However, they were so relieved at seeing him safe and sound again that they soon forgot the serious side of the affair and Chet remarked that Frank had been lucky in having an hour's sleep while the rest had been shouting their lungs out. They trooped out of the cavern back toward their own cave, and Joe told his brother about the missing supplies.

"That's queer," said Frank. "Were they stolen while we were in the big cave?"

"It looks like that."

"But the man who woke us up went into the big cave ahead of us."

"He may have hidden and we might have passed him."

"That's possible. Perhaps it wasn't a man at all. The thief might have been an animal."

The others had not considered this explanation.

"No use crying over spilled milk now," de-

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