MANY NEW THINGS
After all, that was the gayest of gay breakfasts. Tess and Dot did not
appreciate the gravity of the situation in any case; they were only glad
to be off “that pitchy boat,” as Tess proclaimed it, and there was so
much on the island that was novel that the little girls could not fail
to be excited and interested every moment of the time.
Besides, Tess and Dot were in Neale’s secret of the eggs laid by the
wonderful four-legged hen without feathers. This description of the
wonder pleased the little folks very much.
“I don’t see what you mean by all this mystery,” declared Agnes, tasting
her first fried egg gingerly enough.
Then she ate it all down very quickly, for it was now late in the
morning, and she had been hungry for her breakfast.
“Isn’t it all right?” demanded Neale.
“It tastes kind of—of fishy, I think,” said Agnes. “But I don’t mind
it.”
“I suppose,” said Luke gravely, “that if there are hens here on the
island they probably frequently dine off the shellfish along the shore.
So that would explain the flavor of these eggs.”
“There’s a trick somewhere,” sighed Agnes. “But never mind. If these
eggs are the work of legerdemain, Neale, you can wave your wand again.
I’ll take another.”
Ruth and the others knew by this time, of course, the nature of the
eggs. But it was much fun to keep up the joke as long as Agnes, who was
usually so bright, did not see through it. She said to Neale:
“Can’t you take me to the hen-run and let me see your flock of biddies?
I know they must be trick hens, and I’d like to see them.”
“Ahem!” murmured Neale thoughtfully. “You want to look a gift egg in the
mouth, do you?”
“No. I want to look these hens in the beak,” declared Agnes.
“And you can do that, by ginger!” crowed Luke, suddenly falling over on
the sand in a paroxysm of laughter.
“‘Look ’em in the beak’ is good!” ejaculated Neale. “Yes, you may do
that, Aggie. But—let me think——”
“Don’t think if it is going to strain anything,” said Agnes scornfully.
“There is only one time in the whole twenty-four hours when you can be
sure of doing that,” continued Neale O’Neil, with perfect soberness.
“For goodness’ sake!” exclaimed his girl friend. “Now you are carrying
the thing too far. Only one hour in the twenty-four when the hen that
laid these eggs is to be seen?”
“You have put it pretty near right,” declared Neale. “Isn’t that so, Mr.
Howbridge?”
“I believe so, Neale. At about sunrise, isn’t it?”
“Pretty near that,” agreed Neale. “I’ll wake you up when the time comes
and show them to you, Agnes.”
“Of course, they are some seabird—Oh, no! That can’t be!” she cried.
“For seabirds have feathers.”
“You had better not undertake to strain your mind, Aggie,” advised
Neale. “Wait until the proper time.”
Agnes tossed her head again at that and refused to show any further
interest in the mystery. Besides, there was so much to do just as soon
as breakfast was over that they could not chatter any more about the
eggs.
The sky was fleckless by this time and it did not seem possible that
another storm could come up. But remembering how quickly and
unexpectedly the tempest of the afternoon previous had broken, Mr.
Howbridge first of all considered it wise to make provision for getting
the motor-boat into a more sheltered roadstead. The cove was too open to
the sea, and Neale, on his short exploring trip, had noted a more
sheltered place at the eastern end of the island.
The boys and Mr. Howbridge waded out to the boat again, pushed her keel
out of the sand, and proceeded to paddle the craft along the shore,
while the girls strolled along the strand, easily keeping pace with the
boat. They saw not a living thing on the island save lizards and birds.
There was no sound from the jungle to affright them. The strand itself
was a field of wonderful sea treasures, to be reaped as they pleased.
“It is a wonderful place,” Ruth declared. “I am really glad we came.”
“If we don’t have to stay too long,” ventured Agnes.
“I expect Mrs. MacCall and Aunt Sarah will be pretty lonely without us,”
remarked Tess.
“And Uncle Rufus and Linda,” said Dot, accepting the idea that they
might never return to civilization.
They really had so much to do and so much fun doing it that it was
little wonder if Tess and Dot considered very lightly the
semi-privations the party suffered. What were proper beds, and shelter,
and restaurant-cooked food, compared with the jolly makeshifts that were
made necessary by their present condition?
The camp was established back from the small but sheltered inlet in
which the _Isobel_ was finally anchored. The anchorage was so deep that
a fallen palm log made a gangplank from the rocky shore to the deck of
the motor-boat. By means of this, everything was brought ashore that
they thought would be needful.
The boys brought tarpaulins and pieces of sailcloth, and between four
palm-stems in the middle of the cocoanut grove some rods back from the
water, they proceeded to set up a shelter for the girls to use as a
bedroom. Of course, the living and cooking in general would be done in
the open, and there were plenty of blankets for the boys and Mr.
Howbridge when they lay down to sleep on the sand.
The grove showed some marks of the storm that had swept this part of the
Caribbean so savagely the day before. Although the cocoanuts were in a
green state, some had been wrenched from the tops of the trees and flung
about. The soft meat of these nuts was already good to eat; and there
were bananas and mangoes—the latter refreshing, but not much to the
children’s taste at first.
Neale poked out great lobsters in the crannies of the rocks. There were
crabs to be caught too. Mussels, razor-shell clams and maninoses added
to the edible supplies. Besides these, the waters about the island were
crowded with fish of various kinds. There was little need of the party
going hungry, although Dot did ask rather earnestly for a piece of bread
and butter.
Besides laying up such stores of provisions as they might need for the
next few meals, the party, even Dot and Tess, walked clear around the
island, following the edge of the sea. It was a long walk, but they took
it in the cool of the day and the little folks were not too greatly
wearied by the walk.
They were all, too, delighted with what they saw. There were in some
places great coral rocks heaped up by the surf, and the girls had never
imagined that there could be so many varieties of coral. Great, smooth,
mother-of-pearl-lipped shells were likewise gathered by the children.
There were ill-smelling masses of half-animal, half-vegetable matter to
which the Corner House girls were inclined to give a wide berth. These,
too, had evidently been cast up on shore by the recent storm. Luke poked
at them, and then became importantly scornful.
“You use these probably every time you take a bath in your tub at home,”
he announced. “And because you see them in their natural state you scoff
at them.”
“Not me!” cried Agnes vigorously. “You’ve got the wrong idea if you
think I’d let a thing like that into my bathtub. Whew!”
“I don’t really understand, Luke,” said Ruth. “Is it an animal?”
“Partly. It swims about at first and then adheres to a rock. So then it
grows into a vegetable.”
“Humph!” scoffed Agnes. “Then an oyster is both animal and vegetable,
for that is what it does.”
“They are sponges, are they?” asked Mr. Howbridge. “I never chanced to
see one in its natural state before.”
“Ho!” exclaimed Neale. “Me for the rubber sponges you buy in the drug
stores hereafter. They are nasty, Luke.”
“Don’t blame me,” chuckled the collegian. “They don’t belong to me. And
perhaps you wouldn’t care for rubber if you could see it gathered and
know how it is prepared. But that, like the sponge, goes through so many
processes before becoming commercially useful that we can easily forget
its natural state.”
They got back in time for supper. Somewhere on the way Neale had slyly
discovered some more of the leathery-shelled eggs, and he produced them
triumphantly in an omelet; for Neale, after his circus experience and
other adventures out-of-doors, was by no means a bad cook. They all
acclaimed his skill.
“But I do want to see your flock of funny hens!” exclaimed Agnes. “You
never used to have secrets from me, Neale O’Neil. It began with that
Nalbro Hastings, the girl from the Back Bay. I wonder what she would do
if she were here!”
“Be eaten up with sand-fleas—as we are,” murmured Ruth, scratching.
But the boys had laid a piece of sailcloth for the floor of the girls’
tent; and when they went to bed they were no longer annoyed by the
sandhoppers. Around the fire, after the Corner House girls had retired,
Mr. Howbridge and the two young fellows talked very seriously indeed
regarding their situation here on Palm Island.
“I have an idea from studying your chart, Neale, that we have been
driven far off any steamship course,” said the lawyer.
“That’s my idea, too, sir,” agreed Neale.
“As long as it remains pleasant and we have enough to eat and drink, all
is right enough. But do you notice, boys, that the water barrel aboard
the launch is getting low?” said Mr. Howbridge.
“Crackey! I didn’t think of that,” muttered Neale.
“I did. And I’ve been smelling about for a spring. But I didn’t find
any,” said Luke.
“And many of these coral islands don’t have any fresh water save in the
rainy season.”
“That’s so. But—but, Mr. Howbridge, we’re not sure that this is entirely
a coral island,” Neale said anxiously.
“There are coral reefs surrounding it, anyway,” the lawyer observed.
“Those rocks where we have moored the launch are not coral,” said Luke
suddenly.
“You are right, my boy!” exclaimed Mr. Howbridge more confidently.
“There is a chance that the island may be of volcanic formation, and be
immensely old. As old as the big islands of the West Indies. That being
the case, we may easily find water bubbling up from the subterranean
depths.”
“Hope so,” muttered Neale. “Thirst is an awful thing, as the codfish
said when he found himself on dry land.”
Still, it was not a matter to joke upon. The three followed the example
of the girls and went to sleep, fearing no enemy on this deserted
island. Neale O’Neil was astir very early, however. Indeed, it was not
yet light and a fog lay upon both sea and shore. This gray pall made the
place seem so strange and uncanny that Neale could not go to sleep
again. Besides, he heard something!
He sat up and threw aside his blanket. There was a shuffling step on the
sands below the palm grove. No, there were countless shuffling steps!
Amazed—not a little frightened for the moment—Neale got lightly to his
feet. He was about to touch Luke and try to awaken him, when to his mind
came the simple explanation of the sound, and he almost broke into loud
laughter.
At second thought he stifled this desire to vent his amusement and crept
away from the camp to the edge of the grove. The sliding, shuffling
sound in the sand above highwater mark continued. He could see
absolutely nothing, for the light fog plastered the shore like a mat.
Remembering something that he had promised Agnes Kenway the day before,
Neale went back to the tent and scratched with his finger nail on the
canvas. He heard a movement in answer almost at once, and spoke Agnes’
name.
“This is Ruth,” said the older sister. “What do you want, Neale?”
“Agnes,” replied Neale, chuckling.
“What you punching me for, Ruthie?” asked the sleepy voice of the
flyaway sister.
“Neale wants you,” giggled Ruth. “He’s waking up the whole camp to get
you.”
“Oh! Neale O’Neil!” gasped Agnes. “Do you want me?”
“Come on,” whispered Neale. “I want to show you my hens.”
At that statement Ruth began to laugh again, but Agnes scrambled into
her outer clothing, greatly excited by what Neale had promised her.