DOWN THE COAST.
For the next few minutes the _Arrow_ ran so much risk of having the
sails blown off or the mast broken, that all rejoicing over the capture
of the two big tarpon was banished by the imminence of the danger. Flaw
after flaw darkened the water, flattening the long swells; but at length
the squall passed, and once out of a broad inlet, the sloop headed
straight down the coast under a good breeze.
“What for so much hurry?” grumbled Dave, emerging from the cabin, and
looking around quizzically. “Huh! Plenty time.”
“Oh, we’re in no hurry, Dave,” answered Hugh with a laugh. “This is just
sailing for sport. You’ll like it after a while when you get more used
to it. Go and sit up fore, to windward.”
Dave meekly obeyed.
“A whiff of this salt air will do him good,” said Norton to the captain,
who, ignoring Dave entirely, vouchsafed no reply.
He appeared to be pondering some contingency of which his crew were
unaware. He spat profusely, cast his eyes aloft at the topsails that had
not been lowered despite the squall, then looked measuringly at his
sloop.
“Wind’s slackening,” he observed.
Hitherto heading southward, the _Arrow_ now began to edge toward the
long line of keys. By this time the wind had gradually dwindled almost
to a breath, and the sun hung far down the Western sky, glowing like a
disc of molten copper.
“Bad weather comin’,” croaked Dave, noting these signs. “One day, two
day off, p’raps.”
This gloomy prophecy was received in silence. No one thought it safe or
worth while to deny the assertion.
Presently they came abreast of a fringe of larger keys fronting an
important harbor. Beyond the broad inlet that led in toward the bay and
mainland, a stretch of smooth, clean, white sand, bordered by clumps of
waving cabbage palms, indicated to Captain Vinton that he was near one
of his old camping places.
“I’m goin’ to stop over thar for supper,” he called to the boys. “We
might better spend the night on shore, for there’ll be wind ag’in and
rough water later on.”
So the _Arrow_ made in shoreward. The four boys reefed her jib and her
topsail and stood ready to reef the main sheet. When everything had been
attended to on board the sloop and the anchor had been cast, all piled
into a big dory trailing astern.
“‘Pull for the shore, boys, pull for the shore!’” sang Norton in a
rollicking voice. And they did. Soon they were preparing supper on the
beach.
“There’s squalls breedin’ out yonder,” remarked the captain after supper
while lighting his corncob pipe. “After dark I’d ruther have these keys
atween ’em and us. But perhaps they’ll blow over. Yon can’t never tell
for sure, at this time o’ year.”
Unpromising as the weather seemed, the evening passed without anything
happening to cause discomfort. The storm clouds drifted past, giving way
to a host of brilliant stars that took possession of the heavens, and to
a steady westerly breeze that bid fair to continue all night. The
captain and the Seminole guide, wrapping themselves in blankets which
had been brought ashore in the dory, dozed beside the driftwood fire.
The four boys and Roy Norton, however, enjoyed a swim in the lagoon
before they sought their own blankets and “turned in” for a good night’s
rest. Their bunks were snug hollows scooped out of the sand, warm and
dry, a few feet away from the glowing embers.
At sunrise the breeze freshened a little, but the weather was balmy. The
first rays of the rising sun woke the voyagers, and the boys would have
been sorry had they missed seeing the gorgeous semi-tropical dawn burst
upon the world. The sky was one vast, rosy glow, and the ocean glittered
with opalescent hues. Low islands, overgrown with close, green, stunted
vegetation, were on every side. They stretched like golden bars across
the lagoons, showing the broad sound on one side and on the other the
dark blue of the Gulf Stream, far out where the Florida Straits widened
toward the distant Bahamas.
When the sun was an hour high, they breakfasted on fruit, fish, toast,
and coffee. That simple repast over, they gathered up their belongings
and prepared to return to the sloop. Quite unexpectedly, an idea crept
into Dave’s sluggish mind:
“Good moon last night, much white beach, turtle come out and lay eggs,”
he remarked slowly. “P’raps we find eggs. Might try.”
He rose and strolled lazily along the beach, accompanied by the four
young scouts.
“Maybe bear will walk beach after eggs,” he added presently. “Young
master run back, get rifle.”
“Wait for me, then,” said Alec, and he ran back to the camping place.
Returning in a few minutes, he handed the rifle to Dave. “If we meet a
bear, you can shoot him,” he said. “I don’t want to, even if I could.”
Dave gave a low chuckle. “Oh, guess we won’t find bear till night,” he
said. “We just go look for signs now.”
Signs proved to be fairly plentiful; so it was decided, to the
unseaworthy Indian’s great satisfaction, to remain there that day, hunt
at night and set sail early on the morrow. The day passed pleasantly,
though uneventfully, and, after supper, Captain Vinton went aboard the
_Arrow_. Dave sat up while the others took “forty winks” before being
roused for the night hunt. At the rising of the moon, they all set forth
in single file, and crossed the little island by an old trail through
the chaparral to the ocean side. There they found a firm, wide, sandy
strip of shore on which a low surf was murmuring its continuous song.
The moon sailed higher and higher, the night was delightfully warm and
calm, and there was an excellent prospect of finding game.
Telling Norton, Chester and Hugh to hide in the scrubby growth that
fringed a sand dune, Dave took Alec and Billy along the beach for about
fifty yards. In the full moonlight they could see quite plainly the
curious wobbly trail, rough and broad, of a large turtle, leading to and
from the water. Dave followed it for a few paces, then stopped abruptly
and began to prod the sand with a stick which he had picked up for that
purpose.
“Got ’em! Got eggs!” he announced presently. “Big nest heap full.”
“All right,” said Alec. “Now we’d better go back to where the others
are, and wait for the hungry old——”
“By and by moon go down,” interposed the guide, with an unusual degree
of interest. “Then bear may come out for walk,—get his supper, huh?
Come.”
They went back to the place of ambush, and waited quietly. How long they
waited not one of them could tell exactly. It seemed hours. At last
their patience was rewarded. A clumsy black form emerged from the thick
vegetation on the dunes, stood motionless for several minutes sniffing
the air, and then ambled slowly and cautiously toward the water, pausing
now and then to nose the warm sand.
“It’s a bear, and he smells our tracks,” whispered Hugh.
“Will he find the nest?” Billy asked, nudging Dave with his elbow.
“Sure, he find it all right,” was the whispered reply of the Indian.
“When turtle make nest, lay eggs, scent is stronger than what we leave.
Watch him. You can—huh, look!”
The small black bear had stopped near the turtle’s nest, and now it
uttered a soft grunting squeal of delight. It half raised itself on its
hind quarters, looking around warily to make sure it would not have to
share the feast with any other of its tribe. Then, quite suddenly, it
dropped down on all fours, and lunging forward, began to scoop up the
eggs with its paws, smacking its lips greedily.
Dave raised the rifle, took deliberate aim, and—— Just then Hugh pushed
the weapon aside with a quick movement of his arm.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot it!” gasped the lad, excitedly. “See,—over
there in that clump of bushes!”
With a muttered exclamation, Dave glanced in the direction that Hugh was
pointing. The others did likewise. They then beheld a sight which was
far more interesting and more worth while than that of a harmless animal
lying dead upon the sand, victim of Dave’s marksmanship.
Two little black cubs, scarcely larger than terriers, but much rounder,
chubbier and more furry, trotted out from the shadow of the dune and
waddled toward their feasting mother. As fast as their short legs would
carry them, they ran to her side and fell to gobbling up the remaining
eggs. When the nest had been emptied, Ursula and her cubs romped
together on the moonlit beach, and, finally, walked away, unharmed.
Well pleased with the amusing scene they had witnessed, the hunters
returned to their camp site, went to sleep presently, and on the morrow
rejoined Captain Vinton on the sloop.