THE TURTLE CATCHERS
The two older Corner House girls, like the two younger, were fear-ridden
during at least a part of that second night of their separation. But
perhaps Tess and Dot had much less to be really afraid of than Ruth and
Agnes.
The latter spent the remainder of the hours of darkness after the
strangers landed on Palm Island at the foot of the great tree that
topped the hill above the camp that had been established for the girls
before the boys had taken to the raft with Mr. Howbridge.
Crouched at the foot of the giant palm Ruth and Agnes clung to each
other, sleeping but fitfully, until dawn. Aroused in the faint gray
light, the sisters crept down to the shelter of the jungle again. They
lay there, listening for sounds from the camp which they believed the
Spanish-speaking crew of the mysterious craft had made at the spring.
The men were not early astir. When the sun was well up Ruth insisted
upon going up the hill again and out into the open so that they could
see over a low place in the jungle to the cove where the mysterious boat
was anchored.
It was there in the mist. Agnes clung to her sister’s arm and stared at
it too. A somewhat slovenly looking craft, wide of beam, unpainted, with
stubbed masts, old rigging, and a dirty smother of canvas that had not
been even reefed when it was allowed to drop upon the deck.
If the appearance of the craft was a criterion of the character of her
crew, the girls hoped not to see the latter at all!
“I am afraid to talk with them. I wish Mr. Howbridge and the boys were
here,” said Ruth.
“Wouldn’t we better ask these men to go in search of Guardy and Luke and
Neale?”
“Should we? I wonder,” sighed Ruth. “Perhaps they know something about
the children.”
“Then we must ask them!” cried Agnes.
“Wait. They are up now. I hear them.”
In fact, within a very few moments the girls heard the strangers down
upon the beach. The fog had lain upon the shore and sea in a low curtain
for some minutes after the sun came up. Now by the shouting they heard,
Ruth and Agnes knew that the crew ashore was chasing and capturing the
turtles.
“I guess these men are just turtle catchers,” Ruth said reflectively.
“They go from island to island capturing the turtles. It is not likely
that a gentleman like Señor Benno would have engaged such men to search
for us. I am afraid of them, Agnes.”
“So am I, dear. Unless we tell them that we have friends and a
motor-boat near——”
“But they will want to know why the motor-boat does not come after us.
No. We must remain hidden.”
They dared not go back to their camp under the rock. The turtle catchers
would of course find that retreat. But as long as they did not know that
the campers were girls who were still on the island, Ruth hoped the
fellows would make no search for them.
After a while Agnes tired of staying hidden in the jungle. Besides, the
insects became very troublesome as the day grew warmer.
“And how do we know but Mr. Howbridge and the boys are trying to signal
to us? At least, they may have found the children and be in sight
again.”
“I really hope you will keep quiet, Agnes,” said the older girl. “I do
not want to attract these men. They do look awfully rough.”
“I know!” sighed Agnes. “Do you suppose the turtle catchers will remain
long?”
“I don’t know just how they follow their—their profession,” hesitated
Ruth.
“Profession!” giggled Agnes.
“But they will probably remain here until they have made a complete haul
of the turtles that come to this shore. I do not think any great numbers
were here last night. Neale said something about the numbers fluctuating
very much, did he not?”
“That boy reads and absorbs so much,” declared Agnes. “To think of his
knowing about sea-turtles at all!”
“If we ever come into this locality again,” said Ruth, “I shall want to
be informed upon a lot of topics that I never considered of moment.”
“You’d think Neale O’Neil had expected to be cast away on a desert
island,” declared the younger sister. “He makes a play of it.”
“He takes it too lightly, I fear,” sighed Ruth. “But let us hope he will
not take the search for Tess and Dot too lightly. The poor dears! What
might not have happened to them in these two days?”
“Well,” rejoined Agnes, “we know what happened to them for part of the
time. They were safe enough when they drifted out of our sight night
before last.”
“Safe enough!” repeated Ruth.
“At least, they had not been drowned,” her sister said convincingly.
“And I do believe, dear—somehow I feel it!—that nothing actually bad has
happened to them. Guardy and the boys will find them safe and sound.”
“I can only hope so. And I hope they find the boat safe and sound as
well. If they can finish repairing it——Oh, dear me! Why was I foolish
enough the other day to insist upon their stopping in the repair work
and finding water first?”
“Well!” exclaimed Agnes.
“I blame myself,” declared the older girl. “If I had been content the
engine would have been working and the children could not have drifted
away on the _Isobel_. Dear me! I am always doing something for which I
condemn myself afterward.”
“I know you condemn yourself, Ruthie, all right,” returned Agnes. “But I
do not think you are always just. See how you blamed yourself for our
going to Carrie Poole’s dance and getting cold. One would never think we
ever had a cold now! You are as brown as a berry and I am positively
getting fat.”
“I am not so sure that I am to be the less condemned for our having
foolishly taken chances with our health back home. If it hadn’t been for
that we should not be in this situation, that is sure.”
“Goodness! You are unreasonable, I think,” murmured Agnes, and said no
more at the time.
She insisted, however, upon stealing up the hill to the foot of the palm
tree and gazing off across the sea to the east in the hope of seeing
some sign of their friends. Ruth could not restrain Agnes from doing
this every couple of hours.
The binoculars had been left with them, and Agnes scanned sharply every
observable foot of the nearest island. The spot where the _Isobel_ lay
was around on the far side, however; and what had become of the raft was
as great a mystery to the girls.
About noon she came hurriedly back to Ruth, however, and told her that
the thing that had been fluttering so long from the top of the palm tree
on that other island was gone.
“Blown away?” remarked Ruth thoughtfully.
“I don’t think so. The wind is not blowing very hard. I wish I had sat
right up there and kept the glasses on that tree. I might have seen
something.”
“Do you suppose it was removed by Guardy or the boys?”
“Why not? If it was put up by Tess and Dot——”
“In that tall tree! Impossible.”
“Well, then, are there two parties of castaways?” demanded Agnes, rather
crossly. “Everything I suggest you pick flaws in, Ruthie.”
But Ruth hugged her, and the younger sister returned her caress with
real affection. Their trouble was too deep for them really to wrangle.
The anxiety each felt drew them closer together.
If of late Agnes had felt herself shut away from Ruth’s closer
confidence because of the older girl’s interest in Luke Shepard, this
experience on the tropical island was renewing the sisters’ old-time
contact and appreciation of each other. It was true Agnes was hoydenish
at times, and loved to play with Neale O’Neil and the other boys; but
she was growing older every day, too, and many of the secrets and
interests of girlhood she could share only with Ruth.
“Cheer up!” she now exclaimed, wiping the tears from her sister’s eyes
with the cleanest corner of her only handkerchief. “Surely we need not
go through much more worriment. This situation is past being made any
worse, that is sure.”
“I wish it may be so,” murmured Ruth.
“Of course it is. Things will take a turn. We’ll soon see the _Isobel_
scooting around the end of that island and heading this way.”
But this much desired sight did not gladden their eyes. Even Ruth
climbed to the palm tree to watch. And it was because the two girls
remained up there that the final incident of their adventure on the
island came to fruition. They were seen from the deck of the frowsy
schooner!
They were startled by a raucous shout from the sea. Turning her glasses
in that direction, Ruth beheld a ragamuffin sailor half way up the
foremast of the turtle catcher waving his cap at them.
“Oh, Agnes, they have seen us!” gasped Ruth.
“Let’s—let’s run and hide!” murmured the younger girl.
“I don’t know that that will do much good.”
“I know it will,” cried Agnes. “That is, if we hide so well that they
cannot find us.”
“Perhaps it would be better to face them and make them think that we
have men friends near at hand.”
“No chance,” urged Agnes. “We can’t fool them. They will know that we
have been hiding from them. If there were men in our party they would
have already shown up. No, Ruth, we can’t fool ’em that way.”
“Perhaps you are right,” sighed the older sister. “But where shall we
hide?”
“Let’s go back to the other point—where the _Isobel_ was moored. When
the boys return they will come there first, of course.”
Agnes spoke much more confidently than she felt. Like her sister she had
a strong dislike to meeting these turtle catchers. She had seen that
class of natives on the water front at St. Sergius, and their appearance
had rather intimidated even Agnes, who usually felt no fear of any of
her fellow men.