d jumped for the boat, had missed it and fallen on
the rocks. Not caring whether Masterson and his cronies saw them or
not, the boys raced along the beach. From the groans of the injured
person they knew that he was badly, possibly mortally, hurt.

In a few minutes they reached his side.

"It's the wild man!" cried Jack, as they gazed at a hairy,
wild-looking man who lay stretched out, breathing heavily, on the
rocks where he had fallen. His only clothing was a pair of tattered
canvas trousers and a ragged shirt.

"Poor old Foxy. He's done for at last, is Foxy, for his sins," groaned
the man in an insane voice. "He suffered terrible for his crimes, has
Foxy, but it's all over now."

"Foxy!" exclaimed Jack. "That's the man that came down the river with
Blue Nose Sanchez. The man who stayed in the boat."

"He must have landed here and then gone crazy from privation," said
Jack. "I can't find that any bones are broken," he said after a brief
examination. "Suppose we carry him back to camp?"

"I wonder where that Masterson outfit has got to?" said Tom, as they
picked up the wasted form of Foxy, who was raving and moaning by
turns.

"I don't know. They are in a fine predicament now. They've got no food
and no boat They're marooned on this island."

"I suppose we'll have to help them out," said Tom.

"I guess so, though they don't deserve it."

"I lost that boat," moaned Foxy. "I could have got away in it. Poor
old Foxy. It's tough on Foxy," and he began to weep.

The professor found that the man had not suffered any broken bones
but the fall had bruised and sprained him and he was helpless. From
scattered bits of his ravings they learned what he had endured on the
island and how, when the black sand began to burn him, he had had to
give up working on it. Then his boat had drifted away and since then
he had lived the life of a wild man, setting snares for rabbits and
partridges, and eating them raw, tearing them with his clawlike
fingers.

Early the next day the expected happened. Chastened, and with burned
and swollen hands and feet, Masterson and his cronies came into the
boys' camp at breakfast time. They looked crestfallen and sheepish,
but the boys did not want to make them feel any worse than they did,
so they spared them questions at first.

But when Masterson begged them to get them out of their predicament
and take them back to Yuma, Jack felt that it was time to put them
through a cross examination.