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part of the
     trees. It seemed that they did not trust the soft soil in which they were growing,
     and had sent out extra roots above ground as buttresses.
    “They’re pandanus,” explained Mick. “Some people call them breadfruit trees, because
     you can make a kind of bread from them. I ate some once; it tasted horrible. Look
     out!”
    He was too late. Johnny’s right leg had sunk into the ground up to his knee, and as
     he floundered to extricate himself, the left leg plunged even deeper.
    “Sorry,” said Mick, who didn’t look at all sorry. “I should have warned you. There’s
     a muttonbird colony here—they make their nests in the ground, like rabbits, and in
     some places you can’t walk a foot without falling into them.”
    “Thank you for telling me,” said Johnny sarcastically, as he clambered out and dusted
     himself off. There were a great many things to learn, it seemed, on Dolphin Island.
    He came to grief several times in the burrows of the muttonbirds—or wedge-tailed shearwaters,
     to give them their proper name—before they emerged from the trees and walked down
     onto the beach on the eastern side of the island, facing the great emptiness of the
     open Pacific. It was hard to believe that he had come from far beyond that distant
     horizon, brought here by a miracle he still did not understand.
    There was no sign of human life; they might have been the only inhabitants. This coast
     was exposed to the seasonal gales, so all the buildings and dock installations were
     on the opposite side of the island. A huge tree trunk, cast up on the sand and bleached
     white by months and years of sun, was a silent monument to some past hurricane. There
     were even great boulders of dead coral, weighing many tons, which could only have
     been hurled up onto the beach by wave action. And yet it all looked so peaceful now.
    The boys started to walk along the sand dunes between the edge of the forest and the
     coral-covered beach. Mick was searching, and presently he found what he was looking
     for.
    Something large had crawled up out of the sea, leaving what looked like tank tracks
     in the sand. At the end of the tracks, high above the water level, there was an area
     of flattened sand in which Mick commenced to dig with his hands.
    Johnny helped him, and about a foot down they came across dozens of eggs the size
     and shape of table-tennis balls. They were not hard shelled, however, but leathery
     and flexible. Mick took off his shirt, made a bag out of it, and packed in all the
     eggs he could.
    “D’ya know what they are?” he asked.
    “Yes,” said Johnny promptly, to Mick’s obvious disappointment. “Turtle eggs. I saw
     a movie on television once, showing how the baby turtles hatch and then dig themselves
     out of the sand. What are you going to do with these?”
    “Eat them, of course. They’re fine, fried with rice.”
    “Ugh!” said Johnny. “You won’t catch me trying it.”
    “You won’t know,” answered Mick. “We’ve got a very clever cook.”
    They followed the curve of the beach around the north of the island, then the west,
     before coming back to the settlement. Just before they reached it, they encountered
     a large pool, or tank, connected to the sea by a canal. As the tide was now out, the
     canal was closed by a lock gate, which trapped water in the pool until the sea returned.
    “There you are,” said Mick. “That’s what the island is all about.”
    Swimming slowly around in the pool, just as he had seen them out in the Pacific, were
     two dolphins. Johnny wished he could have examined them more closely, but a wire-mesh
     fence made it impossible to get near the pool. On the fence, in large red letters,
     was a message which read: QUIET PLEASE—HYDROPHONES IN ACTION.
    They tiptoed dutifully past, then Mick explained: “The Prof doesn’t like anyone talking
     near the dolphins, says it’s liable to confuse them. One night some crazy fisherman
     got drunk, and