I thought there would be too great a risk in trying to purloin one of our pigs, the sty being not above a dozen yards from the fowl-house, but Billy would do it, and assured me he would get one of the young ones as easy as anything. Accordingly I let him go, and sure enough he came back in no long time carrying one of the piglets close in his arms, and I had not heard above one feeble squeal, the reason I heard no more being that Billy slipped into the little pig's mouth a bit of cocoa-nut he happened to have in his pocket. But Billy himself was in a furious temper, telling me, when we had gotten ourselves safe away, that he had seen his best axe, and his own wooden spade, on which he had carved the initial letter of his name, lying close by the pig-sty, and he was perfectly overcome with anger at the thought that his very own tools were being used by these sacrilegious hands. Nothing would satisfy him but that he must go back and bring them away, which he did, and we took them and the pig down to our canoe, and paddled back to the Red Rock, very well satisfied with our night's work. The next night we paid another visit to the island, and this time we went to the plantation of yams, finding, as we half expected, that the men had already made some depredations on it. Having brought spades as well as baskets, we dug up a good many of the yams that remained, and carried them to the canoe in two or three trips. We continued these expeditions night after night, finding a certain fascination in them, and being tickled with the thought that while the men were lapped in slumber we were gradually depriving them of their means of subsistence. "'Tis just like housebreakers, ain't it, master?" said Billy gleefully once; "only there ain't no watchman to cop us. And what's more, it ain't wrong neither, for a man ain't doing no wrong if he takes what's his very own." Night by night we drew nearer to the hut, and had worked so often without the least alarm that we flattered ourselves there would soon be no more fruit to gather, and then, as Billy said, Hoggett would begin to starve.