“That’s what the blackboy did in Robinson Crusoe, so Crusoe would know he thanked him for saving his life from the terrible cannibals, and that he would be willing to be his slave forever,” I said to Dragonfly. “Do you solemnly promise to do everything I say, from now on and forevermore?” I asked, and when Dragonfly started to say, “I do,” but got only as far as “I--” when he started to make a funny little sniffling noise. His right hand let loose of my foot, and he grabbed his nose and went into a tailspin kind of a sneeze, as he ducked his neck out of the way of my foot and rolled over and said, “I’m allergic to your foot,” which the dead cannibal on the ground thought was funny and snickered, but I saw a little bluish flower down there with pretty yellowish stamens in its center, and I knew why Dragonfly had sneezed. My Man Friday, in rolling over, tumbled ker-smack into the cannibal and the two of them forgot they were in a game and started a friendly scuffle, just as Circus slid down the tree, joined in with them, and all of a sudden Dragonfly’s initiation was over. He was my Man Friday, and from now on he had to do everything I said. Up to now, it was only a game we’d been playing, but a jiffy later Circus rolled over and over, clear out of reach of the rest of us, and scrambled up into a sitting position and said to us excitedly, “Hey Gang! Look! I’ve found something--here at the foot of the tree. _It’s a letter of some kind!_” I stared at an old envelope in Circus’s hands, and remembered that right here where we were was exactly where we’d found the kidnapped girl and that the police hadn’t been able to find the ransom money, and that the captured kidnapper hadn’t told them where it was. In fact, he had absolutely refused to tell them. We’d read it in the newspapers. Boy oh boy, when I saw that envelope in Circus’s hands, I imagined all kinds of things, such as it being a ransom note or maybe it had a map in it and would tell us where we could find the money and everything! Boy oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!... 3 Well, when you have a mysterious sealed envelope in your hand, which you’ve just found under some pine needles at the base of a tree out in the middle of a forest, and when you’re playing a game about finding buried treasure, all of a sudden you sort of wake up and realize that your game has come to life and that you’re in for an honest-to-goodness mystery that will be a thousand times more interesting and exciting than the imaginary game you’ve been playing. We decided to keep our new names, though, which we did, although we had an argument about it first. I was still Robinson Crusoe, and Dragonfly was my Man Friday. Circus and Poetry wanted us to call them the cannibals, but Dragonfly wouldn’t. “I don’t want to have to worry about being eaten up every minute. You’ve got to turn into goats right away. Besides, one cannibal’s already been shot and is supposed to be dead.”