Chapter XV: 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!