"It's a brown basket, with a white cover," answered James.
George and Harry were too full of laughter to trust themselves to
speak; but Charles exclaimed, as he drew aside the covering,
"There's no brown basket here."
"There ought to be," said one of the coast-guards; "I brought my
things in a brown basket."
"So did I," exclaimed another.
"There's a cheat somewhere," said James.
"You haven't done as you agreed," said Charles. "You promised to carry
all the things in one boat."
"Yes, that's what you agreed to do," shouted several.
"And we've kept our promise," said Harry.
"Then, where's _my_ basket?" inquired one of the boys, who had failed
to discover it among the things in the Alert.
"I'll bet the Champion carried some of the provisions over," said
another, "for there are not half of them here."
"No, the Champion didn't have a thing in her," said a third. "She
passed so close to my boat, that I could have jumped into her, and I
took particular pains to see that she was empty."
"Well, here are the things that I brought, at any rate," said Charles,
who had just caught sight of the bag which contained, as he supposed,
his lemons.
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