"Thank you. Thank you very much!" murmured a mild voice. "I haven't had as nice a present as this since I was an itty bitty baby. Now what can I do for YOU?" Neither Samuel nor Roger could speak a word, for where the King had gone down, a tremendous hippopotamus was coming up, the lunch basket hanging carelessly out of a corner of its mouth. For a wild moment Samuel thought his enormous friend and shipmate had been transformed by some witchcraft into this ponderous beast. He even imagined he caught an expression of Ato's in the monster's moist eye. But this gloomy idea was soon dispelled, for, as the creature rose higher out of the water, they could see a desperate and bedraggled figure sprawled across its slippery back.

"Ahoy, Mate!" choked Samuel, his heart thumping like a trip hammer. "Is it really you? Are you safe, then?"

"Safe!" quavered the half-drowned and mud-covered King of the Octagon Isle. "SAFE?" He peered dizzily at the churning crocodiles just a boat's length away, and his voice cracked and broke. "I never felt safer in my life. What am I riding, a whale or an elephant?"

"A river horse," explained the hippopotamus, looking kindly over her shoulder. Then, as the crocodiles began to hiss and roar and come rolling toward them, she gave a ferocious bellow and snort. "Away with you! Be off, you river scum!" she squealed viciously. "These travelers are MINE. Shoot your fire stick, Master Long Legs. That will fix them." For a moment the crocodiles held their post, then, as Samuel fired his gun repeatedly, they began to slide sullenly across the river to the opposite bank. "Hold fast, Master Short Legs, and I'll soon have you ashore," wheezed the hippopotamus, speaking out of the corner of her mouth so as not to drop the picnic basket.

"Yes, yes, but what then?" shuddered Ato, trying to get a finger hold on the monster's slippery neck.

"Why, then, we'll both tell our stories, and after that I'll eat," snorted the river horse, paddling joyously toward the bank.

"You'll EAT!" groaned Ato, ready to roll back into the river. "Oh, my father and mother and maiden aunts!"

"Did you hear that?" Dropping to Samuel's shoulder, Roger whispered fiercely. "Quick now, a shot behind the ear, before it gets any further. Are you going to do nothing while this ravenous monster carries off my poor Master?"

"Sh-hh!" warned Samuel, holding up his finger. "These creatures do not eat meat or men. They're herbivorous, my lad, and this one seems uncommonly kind and friendly. But what puzzles me—" the Royal Explorer looked intently into the face of the Read Bird. "What puzzles me is to find this one talking our language. To my knowledge, only animals in Oz, a few in Ev and you on the Octagon Isle have the gift of speech. And I tell you, Mate, this is a valuable discovery, and a simply splendid specimen of a pachydermatous talking aquatic." Whether the last few words in this sentence or a stone in the river bottom tripped up the Captain, Roger never knew, but without any warning Samuel turned a sudden back somersault into the river, going under as completely as Ato had done.

"Ugh—gr—ugh!" he gurgled, coming up full of mud and disgust. "How did that happen?"

"Stilts!" sniffed Roger, whose wings had saved him from going down with Samuel. "A splendid way to get ashore, Master Salt, so neat and tidy. And a fine Discoverer you look now."

Sighing deeply, Samuel watched his stilts floating out of reach, then shaking his head violently to get the water out of his eyes, he swam thoughtfully after the hippopotamus. As he dragged himself up on the bank, a monkey swinging by its tail from the lower branches of a tree snatched his three-cornered hat and scittered all the way to the tree top, at which all the other monkeys let out shrill hoots of mocking merriment.

"Ah! The welcome committee!" sniffled Ato, rolling off the hippopotamus. "Well, Sammy, wherever it is, here we are and a nice mess you've made of the landing. Clothes ruined, weapons gone," (Ato felt his middle dejectedly for his bread knife and blunderbuss), then hitching up the bread board at his waist looked long and accusingly at the Leader of the Expedition.

"Now you mustn't mind a little mud," said the hippopotamus, setting down the picnic basket and gazing from one to the other with frank interest and curiosity. "Mud is beautiful and SO healthy."

"Not for me," frowned Samuel Salt, endeavoring to remove the thick green slime from his hair and ears with his damp silk handkerchief. "But I suppose we'll dry off in time and—"

"Proceed with the business of the day," finished Ato sarcastically, as he squeezed the water out of his silk pantaloons and coat tails. "But I hope you don't mind my saying that a seaman should stick to his boats, Samuel. If I had not fallen in with this kind and obliging hippopotamus, I'd have been a crocodile's lunch by this time."

"Oh, I'd have got you out somehow," muttered Samuel, smoothing back his hair sulkily. "And those stilts really saved your life. Suppose that animal had bitten your leg instead of your stilt? By the way, what's the name of this island, Mate?" Anxious to change the subject, Samuel turned to Ato's tremendous rescueress.

"Mate?" repeated the hippopotamus, wiggling her ears inquiringly, "What may that mean?"

"It is what a seaman calls his crew and his friends," explained Samuel, grinning in spite of himself.

"Seaman? Mate?" mused the hippopotamus in a rapt voice. "How cozy, how beautiful!" Overcome with emotion, the mighty monster leaned forward and lapped up the picnic basket, Oz flags, lunch and everything. "I shall remember this as long as I live," she assured them with a gulp as one of the flags went sideways down her throat. "Nikobo, Little Daughter of the Biggenlittle River People, bids you welcome to Patrippany Island."

"Little daughter!" exclaimed Ato in a smothered voice. "Ha, ha! Patrippany Island. Ho, ho! This is interesting. I knew there was a trip in it somewhere, a wet trip for us, eh, Samuel?"

"But what I don't understand," said the Royal Explorer of Oz, briskly massaging his beard with his handkerchief, "is how you happen to speak our language. Do all the creatures on this Island talk? I don't mean that monkey chatter above."

"No, none of the other creatures here speak the language of man," answered Nikobo solemnly. "I never knew I could speak it myself till five moons ago last Herb Day."

"Herb Day? Dear, dear and dear! How confusing it all grows," sighed Ato, emptying the water out of his hat which had somehow survived his river ducking. "Do you suppose she means Thursday? Roger! ROGER! Keep away from those monkeys. Do you wish to lose all your tail feathers?"

"Oh, it's all very simple," Nikobo rolled her eyes from side to side. "One day I eat herbs and that is Herb Day. One day I eat twigs and that is Twig Day, and one day I eat grass and that is Grass Day, and—"

"And one day you eat lunch baskets and Oz flags, and I suppose that makes it Flag Day," chuckled Roger, coming down from a little excursion in the tree tops. "She's swallowed the Oz flags, Skipper, and if that doesn't make her a citizen of Oz, I'll eat my feathers."

"Go ahead, if it will keep you any quieter," said Samuel Salt, who did not want this interesting conversation interrupted by Roger's nonsense. "So you only began to speak our language five moons ago last Herb Day? What made you do that?"

"A boy," confided Nikobo with a ponderous wag of her head.

"Ah, now we're getting somewhere." Feeling in his pocket, Samuel pulled out a small note book and pencil, still damp but usable. "Was it a native boy?" he asked eagerly.

"No, no, certainly NOT." The hippopotamus panted a little at the very idea of such a thing. "The Leopard Men speak a strange roaring language I have never been able to make head or tail of. Besides, to speak to them would not be safe nor desirable. The Leopard Men have long tusks and spears and—"

"Leopard Men!" yelled Ato, flinging both arms round the trunk of a tree. "Oh! Oh! and OH! I wish we were safely back at pirating, Sammy. Here we are marooned on this miserable monkey island, inhabited by Leopard Men, surrounded by crocodiles and no way of getting back to the ship."