ADVENTURES OF THE CASTAWAYS
“Now shush! And listen!” whispered Neale, when he grabbed Agnes’ wrist
just outside the girls’ tent.
“What is the matter with you?” she demanded.
“If you don’t keep still,” Neale warned her, “you’ll miss seeing my
flock of chickabiddies.”
“You are fooling, Neale O’Neil. You know you are,” she murmured.
“You come on, and keep still,” he said, still dragging her by the wrist.
“Don’t even whisper. The fog is rising slowly and the dawn will soon
appear. My flock is scary in the daylight——”
“Oh, pshaw!” muttered Agnes. “You just sound silly.”
“I’m not as silly as a girl of your age must be not even to imagine what
kind of eggs those were,” chuckled Neale.
“I knew there was a trick in it!”
“Shush!” he warned her again. “If you don’t mind frightening my flock,
don’t wake up everybody else in the camp.”
She was silent when they came to the edge of the palm grove. It was
already growing light over the sea, and the mass of fog that had covered
everything during the night was lifting and rolling back upon itself.
Something moved on the sand not twenty feet from where the girl and boy
stood.
“Oh! What is that?” queried Agnes.
“Hear ’em?” said Neale. “That shuffling sound? I bet there are a hundred
of ’em on this shore.”
“Neale O’Neil! What does it mean?” gasped the girl, in wonder.
“It means that we are on one of the Tortugas. We must be. And this
desert strand is populous at night, sure enough.”
“Turtles!” shrieked Agnes.
At once the sliding and shuffling noise increased. The first beams of
the sun coming up out of the eastern ocean began to separate the strands
of mist. The boy and girl peered earnestly out upon the open shore.
“There’s one!” gasped Agnes. “A big fellow! Wish we could catch it to
show to the children, Neale.”
“I mean to catch it,” declared Neale, running down from the cocoanut
grove, a stick in his hand. “And more than one.”
“Going to make it lay more eggs?” giggled Agnes, keeping step with him.
“My dear girl! That is fresh meat for us. Fish and clams are all right.
But here is the nicest kind of meat—better than chicken. And nourishing
fat. My flock not only will supply us with eggs at this season of the
year, but the turtle will give us ragout and soup beyond compare.”
“Why, you talk like a French chef, Neale O’Neil,” she cried.
“Say rather like a hungry American boy who wants variety. Ah! This is a
monster, Aggie!”
They almost fell over a turtle which was bigger around than the bottom
of an ordinary tub. Neale stuck his stick under it, heaved persistently,
and the struggling, hissing creature went over on its back.
“Now look him in the beak,” laughed Neale. “But keep away from his
flippers. Those claws are sharp.”
“Goodness!” ejaculated the girl. “What do you think! Here is another!”
“We’ll turn over a couple more. They can’t very well get back on their
stomachs and crawl away. You see, they all beat it for the sea about
sunrise and go to feeding on kelp and the like down on the rocky bottom.
They come ashore to lay their eggs—and—and visit together, I suppose,”
he added, rather confused in his mind regarding the natural history of
the sea-turtle.
Twice he pitched upon a scrambling turtle and turned it over. The three
were well above highwater mark, so the sea could not roll in and aid
them to escape.
“And now,” pursued the boy, “let us hunt the haymow for eggs for
breakfast.”
“How ridiculous! What do you mean—‘haymow’? Where do those funny things
lay their eggs?”
“Wait,” urged Neale O’Neil. “It is getting lighter now, so we can see
better. Look along the sands up here near the jungle. If there is a sort
of round place patted down—not just smooth, but hard—that may be a nest.
The turtle scoops out the nest with its fore-flippers, lays the eggs
smoothly in the saucer, and then covers back the sand and beats it down
with its flippers. Look! There is a likely place!”
Agnes fell on her knees immediately and began to scratch away the sand.
She came, not more than two inches below the surface, to the huddle of
leathery-skinned eggs.
“Dear me, Neale! How exciting this is. I thought I should cry myself to
sleep last night because I was a Miss Crusoe. But I went to sleep so
fast that I forgot to cry. And now _this_! Why, being cast away on a
desert island is lots of fun, I think.”
Later, the two smaller girls quite agreed with Agnes on this point. But
Ruth looked at the situation more soberly.
When they were all up and had bathed their faces at the edge of the
water——
“But I feel sticky!” Tess observed, after her ablutions were performed.
“I might just as well have not washed my face. And if there isn’t
anything but salt water here on this island, shall we have to drink only
coffee and tea?”
“I’d rather have milk,” said Dot thoughtfully. “I guess if Neale found
hens here he can find cows, too,” and she laughed.
“Of course I can find milk,” declared Neale O’Neil promptly. “And don’t
worry about the salt water for washing your face, Tess. It is very good
for your eyes, sea-water is.”
Luke looked sideways at Ruth and muttered:
“Some boy, that Neale. He’d be cheerful at the bottom of a well.”
“We must admit Neale O’Neil is a very good person to have along if one
is to be cast away on an uninhabited island,” said the critical sister,
smiling. “But where, do you suppose, will he find the milk?”
They had forgotten the cocoanuts. Neale got a gimlet and bored the
“eyes” of a big one and the milk foamed out into the children’s cups.
They rather liked its sweetish flavor too.
“Although,” said Dot, “I think my milk’s been skimmed. It looks sort of
blue.”
In the stores which they had brought ashore from the launch there was
some canned milk; but they were sparing of this. The older members of
the party refused to use it at all in their drink. There was
considerable coffee and tea and some canned fruits and meat. They had
not expected to be gone from the St. Sergius Arms much longer than two
days, and had provisioned accordingly.
But Neale’s bright mind evolved makeshifts for food as well as for other
things. He entered into the spirit of this Crusoe experience with all
the gusto of live adventure. It would have seemed very tame indeed to
him, on this uninhabited island, if his ingenuity had not to be taxed.
Mr. Howbridge warmly acclaimed Neale’s statement that the capture of the
sea-turtles was important. After breakfast, which was graced by the
turtle eggs which Agnes had helped discover, the whole party gathered
about the three sprawling turtles, which the lawyer called “testudinate
reptiles.”
“Don’t call them by such horrid names, Guardy, or I shall not want to
eat them,” begged Agnes.
“And who is going to do the preparing?” Luke wanted to know. “How do you
get them out of their shells, Neale? That looks like a formidable task.”
“You can read poetry to them, if you like,” grinned Neale, “till they
get disgusted and shuck their shells to get away. Or you can tickle
their toes with a straw until they laugh so heartily that they split
their shells.”
“Now, Neale!” exclaimed Ruth, while the others laughed with and at him.
“Never mind. Give me the boat-ax,” said the joking boy. “I don’t need
any help. We will have stewed turtle for dinner if you leave it to me.”
Mr. Howbridge and Luke immediately went aboard the _Isobel_ and began a
thorough overhauling of the engine. They had tools in plenty; and now
that the motor-boat was in quiet water they thought they would be able
to correct the mechanical difficulties. Luke knew considerable about an
engine, and the lawyer was not unhandy himself.
Ashore, the bigger girls proceeded to make the tent more comfortable, so
that if they _should_ be obliged to stay another night it would be
better for the children. There were certain pans and dishes to wash, and
washing them in salt water was not an easy matter.
Nobody had said much about the small amount of drinking water; but Ruth
had thought of it and she forbade Agnes to use any of the supply that
had been brought ashore unless she was actually obliged to. If Tess and
Dot said anything about being thirsty, Ruth gave them fruit, the juice
of which made up for the lack of water which they would have drunk under
other circumstances.
As for Tess and Dot, when they had sated their curiosity in looking at
the three turtles on their backs with their flippers waving in the air,
they wandered away on a tour of exploration, the smaller sister bearing
her Alice-doll, which was almost as much her companion as her own head.
The two little girls wandered afar that morning. The others were so sure
that Tess and Dot could not get into trouble that they did not limit the
bounds of their wanderings, so long as they kept to the easterly side of
the mound on which grew the great palm tree.
The island was not more than an eighth of a mile wide at this end, and
the shrubbery in the middle, between the two strips of shore, was not
properly a “jungle,” for it was easily penetrated even by Tess and Dot
Kenway.
Dot, however, was not as sturdy as her sister. Nor was she so much
interested in the strange things they saw. In fact, Dot was a very
practical little thing, and nothing, no matter what, suited her unless
it was just what she was used to in and about the old Corner House.
“Aren’t these shells pretty?” cried Tess, gathering pearl-lipped shells
on the strand and loading her apron with them.
“We have shells at home,” said Dot, in her blasé way. “Mrs. MacCall’s
got one as big as that for a sugar scoop.”
“Oh! Well! So she has,” admitted Tess. “But maybe she’d like a new one.”
“What for?” asked the exasperating Dot. “They never wear out, I guess.”
The sun began to get hot and there was no longer a breeze. Even Tess
considered the shade of the dwarf palms preferable to the open beach.
Dot, nursing her Alice-doll, sat down on a stone as soon as Tess called
a halt, and emitted a sigh of relief.
“Well, anyway!” she remarked. “I’m glad you want to wait a while, Tess
Kenway. You know, we don’t have to see everything on this island in one
day.”
“Maybe we have,” rejoined her sister quickly. “If Mr. Howbridge and the
boys get the engine fixed, we’ll go right back to the hotel. Ruth says
so. I need a clean pair of stockings.”
“Well, my Alice-doll ought to have her clothes changed,” admitted Dot.
“I guess we’ll not have to stay here much longer. Or maybe a steamship
will come for us. I——”
And then, with sudden animation, she began waving her arms and feet and
from her lips issued the most excruciating cries. She lost hold of the
doll, which sprawled in the sands. To Tess Kenway’s amazement, Dot began
to travel right away from the edge of the grove toward the sea!