Mr. Anderson made a note of it. Before Eddie nodded to Teena that they should be leaving, he noticed that there was no metal tube lying in the bottom of the boat. Had he been seeing things last Saturday? After all, even Mr. Anderson claimed the men hadn’t brought anything along except a lunch of some kind. Eddie was quite sure it hadn’t been imagination, but he didn’t know why the vision of the round metal cylinder kept coming into his mind. And anything he couldn’t explain bothered Eddie a lot. At the foot of the wharf Teena said, “It’s early yet, Eddie. Let’s take a hike up the beach, shall we? Maybe we could even go as far as the lighthouse and say hello to Cap.” “Suits me,” Eddie agreed. He never got tired of walking along the beach. There was always something new to see and do. The fresh ocean breeze on his face and the soft sand underfoot made him feel good. Nor did he ever tire of picking pebbles off the beach and skipping them across the smooth water of the bay. A little while later they were almost to the cove when a piece of green material caught Eddie’s gaze. It was being gently buffeted up and down on the sand by the small lapping waves. He trotted over and picked it out of the water. “What’d you find, Eddie?” Teena called from nearby. “Just a piece of rubber,” Eddie said, holding up the four-inch length of green material. “Looks like part of a strap off someone’s swim fins.” “Boy, you’re some beachcomber,” Teena teased. “An old strap off someone’s swim fin is some treasure.” Eddie drew back his arm and was about to throw the scrap back into the water, when some printing which was molded into the rubber caught his eye. “Hey,” he said, looking at it closely. “It’s got some kind of foreign words on it.” “So what?” Teena said. “I guess they make swim fins all over the world. Probably some tourist from another country brought them. There are quite a few tourists around here during the summer, you know.” “Yeah, that’s right,” Eddie admitted, but he stuffed the scrap of rubber into his pocket and walked on. In a little while they arrived at the cove where they had come across the two men a week earlier. Owing to the rocks and the rather poor beach, the cove was seldom visited by bathers. There was really little reason for fishermen to put into the cove, either. That was why it had puzzled him to find the two men at the cove the previous Saturday. However, they might simply have been exploring the cove. Eddie and Teena continued across the rough beach. There was no one in sight at the cove. As they walked, they picked up bright shells which sprinkled the sand before them. “Look at these tracks, Eddie,” Teena said, as she pointed down at deep grooves in the sand. They were long and wide—the kind a boat dragged up onto the beach would leave. “They look fresh,” Eddie said. “Couldn’t have been here more than three or four hours, or the tide would have wiped out the marks. Wonder if it was the same two fellows?”