at there. My father knew that the sailors
would send him home if they caught him, so he looked in his knapsack
and took out a rubber band and the empty grain bag with the label
saying "Cranberry." At the last moment my father got inside the bag,
knapsack and all, folded the top of the bag inside, and put the rubber
band around the top. He didn't look just exactly like the other bags
but it was the best he could do.

[Illustration]

Soon the sailors came to unload. They lowered a big net into the hold
and began moving the bags of wheat. Suddenly one sailor yelled, "Great
Scott! This is the queerest bag of wheat I've ever seen! It's all
lumpy-like, but the label says it's to go to Cranberry."

The other sailors looked at the bag too, and my father, who was in the
bag, of course, tried even harder to look like a bag of wheat. Then
another sailor felt the bag and he just happened to get hold of my
father's elbow. "I know what this is," he said. "This is a bag of
dried corn on the cob," and he dumped my father into the big net along
with the bags of wheat.

This all happened in the late afternoon, so late that the merchant in
Cranberry who had ordered the wheat didn't count his bags until the
next morning. (He was a very punctual man, and never late for dinner.)
The sailors told the captain, and the captain wrote down on a piece of
paper, that they had delivered one hundred and sixty bags of wheat and
one bag of dried corn on the cob. They left the piece of paper for
the merchant and sailed away that evening.

My father heard later that the merchant spent the whole next day
counting and recounting the bags and feeling each one trying to find
the bag of dried corn on the cob. He never found it because as soon as
it was dark my father climbed out of the bag, folded it up and put it
back in his knapsack. He walked along the shore to a nice sandy place
and lay down to sleep.

[Illustration]

My father was very hungry when he woke up the next morning. Just as he
was looking to see if he had anything left to eat, something hit him
on the head. It was a tangerine. He had been sleeping right under a
tree full of big, fat tangerines. And then he remembered that this was
the Island of Tangerina. Tangerine trees grew wild everywhere. My
father picked as many as he had room for, which was thirty-one, and
started off to find Wild Island.

He walked and walked and walked along the shore, looking for the rocks
that joined the tw