ose suddenly, flooding them with chill water. Coughing and
spluttering and choking, they retreated further up the beach.

Soon they quieted down.

"I'm soaking wet," she said.

"My name is Charlie," he said sullenly. "Let's go back now."

"How do we go back?" she wanted to know.

"That's a nice doll," Charlie said.

"You took it from me!" Accusingly.

"Aw, I only wanted to look at it."

"She has a crimson dress and everything."

"This is some world," Charlie said after a while.

"What's a world?"

"Oh, a world is--you know--everything."

"Oh."

"You think it has Indians?"

She said, "It ought to have Indians, anyhow."

"And pirates too?" he asked in a voice full of awe.

She nodded her head very seriously. "I like pirates," she said. "They're
so scarey."

Just then a ship came into view far away across the water. It had
enormous sails and a black hull. On the fore-sail was painted a huge
black skull.

"Let's get out of here!" Charlie cried in alarm. But beetling cliffs
reared behind the beach and although they ran frantically along at the
edge of the green sand, they could find no way to scale the cliffs. The
pirate ship came closer and closer.

They got down whimpering at the base of the cliffs and remained very
still. After a long time the pirate ship came close to shore. A longboat
was dispatched and its oars flashed in the triple sunlight like giant
legs on which the longboat walked across the waves toward the beach.

Then the pirates were ashore. The man who led them had only one leg, and
a peg. He looked very mean.

* * * * *

"It's Blackbeard the Pirate!" said Charlie in a frightened whisper. His
Dad had once read him a story about Blackbeard.

The pirate with the wooden leg suddenly had a black beard.

"The doll!" cried Robin.

"What's the matter?"

"We left her down there. Crimson." She called her doll Crimson because
she had a crimson dress.

Now Blackbeard approached the model spaceship with his crew. They
gathered around it, frowning. Robin watched, her face pale, her eyes
wide. Crimson was there on the sand. They were going to see Crimson.
Even as she was thinking these horrible thoughts, one of the pirates saw
Crimson and picked her up. Blackbeard came over and took the doll and
looked at her. At that moment there was a shout from above the cliffs
and an arrow suddenly transfixed one of the pirates. He fell down
writhing and Blackbeard and