"Maybe they will eat you," warned Laddie, who had entered into the play with all his thought and interest. "Oh, Laddie Bunker! They wouldn't," cried Vi. "Well, they might. Anyway, you've got to be afraid of the sharks and not step off the raft." Meanwhile Russ had gone over to the lifeboat. He had not asked even his friend, the quartermaster, if he could play in that boat. But he saw no reason why he could not, as nobody seemed to be using it. The canvas cover was tied down with many strings; but the knots slipped very easily and the boy pulled out three of the knots and then laid back a corner of the canvas. It was dark inside the boat, and before Russ crept into it as he intended, he bent over the gunwale and peered in. Suddenly he gasped, and pulled his head back. He was startled, but Russ Bunker was a courageous boy. He had seen something--or he thought he had seen something--squirming in the brown darkness inside the boat. He waited a little, and then put his head under the canvas and took a long look. Was there something or somebody there? Russ was determined to find out! CHAPTER IX RUSS'S SECRET Russ Bunker looked very funny--Rose said he did--when he suddenly came back to the raft. Vi and Margy shouted to him that he would be drowned; and Laddie said something more about sharks. But their older brother paid little attention to them. He had tied the cover down over the lifeboat again and he would not look toward it, not even when Rose asked him what the matter was and if he was going to leave all five of the castaways on the raft to starve and be thirsty until luncheon time. "I guess this isn't a very good place to play castaway, after all," said Russ gravely. "And, anyway," he added, with sudden animation, "there's the man with the gong. We'll have to run down and get cleaned up before we go to the table." "Dear me!" complained Laddie, "we never can have any fun. We always have to stop and eat or go to bed, or something. Even on this ship we have to." Laddie thought that the most important thing in the world was play. Rose watched Russ with a puzzled look. She felt that something had happened that her brother did not want to talk about. Russ had a secret. The latter did not even look again at the lifeboat as the little party passed it on the way to the staterooms. But Russ Bunker's mind was fixed upon that boat and what he had seen in it, just the same. He really could not decide what to do. He was very much puzzled. Even his mother and father noticed that Russ was rather silent at the lunch table; but he said he was all right. He had something to think about, he told them. Daddy and Mother Bunker looked at each other and smiled. Russ had a way of thinking over things before he put his small troubles before them, and they suspected that nothing much was the matter. But Rose whispered to her brother before they left the table. "I think that isn't very polite, Russ Bunker." Russ looked startled.