Chapter XVI: Mr. Methuselah

Dot’s cries of surprise and Tess’ shrieks for help brought Neale bounding through the grove with the older girls after him in wild alarm. What they saw first was calculated to amaze them.

Cavorting down the beach was Dot Kenway, flat upon her back, her legs and arms waving wildly. She was not moving so very fast, but she evidently was headed for the sea.

Luckily Neale had picked up the first weapon to his hand when he started. This was the stick he had used early that morning to turn over the three captured turtles. He ploughed his way through the brush, leaped across the sands, and arrived beside the traveling Dot just as she rolled off the shell of the huge turtle which, half-buried in the sand, she had thought was a stone!

Neale immediately inserted the stick under the edge of the creature’s lower shell and heaved it over on its back. Dot gathered herself up, crying and sputtering.

“You—you can have your old turkles, Neale O’Neil!” she cried. “I won’t even eat their eggs, if that’s the way they act. I—I thought I was sitting down on a stone. I—I——”

Ruth arrived to comfort her. Meanwhile Tess brought the Alice-doll and Neale and Agnes examined this huge reptile, which really was a monster.

“He must be awfully old,” said Agnes, wonderingly.

“The edge of his upper shell is all cracked and dented. He’s seen some few seasons, all right,” Neale agreed.

“Do they grow very old, Neale?”

“Old as Methuselah,” laughed Neale.

“No!”

“It’s a fact. Tortoises—sea turtles, too—grow to be hundreds of years old. They beat elephants and whales. This fellow——”

“He’ll get away if you turn him over,” Agnes cried.

“I’ll head him up the beach. I want to see——”

Over went the big turtle at that moment. Neale jumped on the corrugated shell and tried to hold the creature down. The sand slid from the shell and as the dull beast started to crawl up the strand, instead of into the sea, Agnes came nearer and pointed at something she saw.

“See there, Neale.”

“Look out! Don’t get in front of him!” Neale warned her. “His beak is as hard as iron.”

“Are those letters, Neale—words?” demanded Agnes, still staring at the turtle.

Neale rolled off, scrambled to his feet, and began to examine the marks on the turtle’s back.

“You’re right they are!” he exclaimed. “We aren’t the first folks that have made a pet of this fellow.”

“Pet!” repeated Ruth, scornfully.

“What does it say?” cried Agnes.

“Perhaps he carries his calling card with him,” announced Neale O’Neil.

Dot stopped crying and Tess and she came nearer to the turtle. The creature, as though realizing that it was foiled in its first attempt to reach the sea, had stopped. They could all see the deep scratches on the shell. They looked like this:

CRISTOFO COLUMBO
1492

“Well, of all things!” gasped Ruth, when she had gained a complete understanding of what the inscription on the turtle’s shell meant.

“Is that his name?” asked Dot. “Cristuff—tuff——Why! And there is his number!”

“I wonder if that is his street number or his telephone?” chuckled Neale.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” exclaimed Agnes, quite in earnest. “What do you suppose it means, Ruth?”

“It seems awfully funny,” observed the oldest Kenway girl. “‘Christopher Columbus, 1492.’ It’s not possible.”

“One thing sure,” said Neale dryly: “They spelled just as poorly in those days as they do now.”

“It can’t be possible!” exclaimed Agnes.

“I remember Christopher Columbus,” said Tess practically. “We learned about him at school.”

“So we did!” shouted Dot, with sudden energy. “You know—‘First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his coun-tri-men!’”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed Tess. “That was George Washington, Dot.”

“Well, it is a most remarkable thing,” Ruth said. “Can’t we keep him to show Mr. Howbridge and Luke?”

“Sure will,” declared Neale. “Wait till I drive him up above highwater mark. And into the shade, too; for this sun would dry him to powder, seems to me, in an hour. I’ll turn him over in the shade and then let’s all take a swim. It should be safe enough in the pool where the _Isobel_ is anchored.”

“I’d like to know how you think we girls are going to go bathing, Neale O’Neil, when we haven’t any bathing suits with us?” complained Agnes.

“I’ll lend you mine,” grinned her boy friend. “But isn’t there anything you girls can wear?”

“I’d like a dip,” sighed Ruth. “We can let the children go in with you boys. And then Agnes and I will take our turn by ourselves.”

“You think of so many nice things, Neale,” said Agnes. “Why can’t you invent us some bathing suits?”

“I might paint the lily and adorn the rose,” grumbled Neale O’Neil. “But I am no modiste. I—guess—not!”

However, after the heat of the day was over they all found means of getting a cool dip. Meanwhile they compared notes. Neale had supplied a most excellent stew of turtle meat, for they had plenty of seasoning, and he had likewise discovered specimens of the plantain, the fruit of which added to the variety of the repast. He was acclaimed a wonderful chef by all.

On the part of Mr. Howbridge and Luke, although they bore upon their hands and faces plentiful marks of toil in grease and smut, they could not report that much progress had been made in repairing the engine. That matter really seemed almost hopeless.

“But there is something of even greater importance,” Mr. Howbridge said the next morning to Neale and Luke. “I am worried about the water question.”

“What fell day before yesterday, I suppose, was soon burned up,” Luke reflected.

“You said it,” agreed Neale.

So, following the usual siesta, for nobody could work even at this time of year in the full heat of the sun, the boys and Mr. Howbridge set off through the brush to sound every likely spot for water, leaving the girls at the dish-washing. They did not have a shovel but they had a broken oar and sticks with which to prod the ground for any dampness that might promise a living spring.

The smaller girls were by this time anxious to run about again. They were much interested in “Mr. Methuselah,” as Neale had dubbed the big turtle on which had been engraved by somebody the name of the discoverer of America and the correct date of that discovery.

“But it makes him awfully old,” Tess said gravely. “How old does it make the turtle, Ruth?”

“Well,” said the older sister, “if we are to believe that Christopher Columbus carved his name and the date on that turtle when he first came to these islands, it must have been more than four and a quarter centuries ago.”

“O-oo!” gasped Dot. “That’s awful old, isn’t it?”

“And the turtle must have been pretty big when the carving was done,” laughed Ruth. “It takes a couple of hundred years for them to gain full size, I believe.”

“What a joke!” ejaculated Agnes. “Then this turtle would be at least six hundred years old right now.”

“It would seem so,” agreed Ruth.

“I guess he must be,” said Tess gravely. “He looks that old. He is the oldest looking thing I ever saw.”

Just then Neale gave a shout, and called to them. The four Corner House girls responded by hurrying to the spot where Neale had come out of the shrubs.

“Here’s another!” he cried.

“Another what?” demanded Agnes.

But she saw what he referred to the next moment. Neale was dancing in front of a big turtle and poking it with his stick to keep it from descending the beach to the sea.

“Come on!” Neale cried. “Here’s another one with his calling card on his back.”

“You don’t mean it!” cried Ruth. “Is he dated, too? Is it Amerigo Vespucci?”

“Wait! This fellow will keep going. There must have been some practical jokers in this neighborhood. Look, Agnes! What are those letters?”

“For goodness’ sake!” gasped Ruth.

But Agnes, almost choked with laughter, spelled out the following inscription on the turtle’s shell:

JULES CESAR
B. C. 48

“Four years before Cæsar died,” exclaimed Ruth, casting back in her mind to ancient history lessons.

“And what do you know about the ‘B. C.’? Cæsar must have known they were going to change the calendar,” chuckled Neale. “And the same informality of spelling. It seems Cæsar and Columbus must have gone to the same school.”

“And,” said Agnes, gravely, but with dancing eyes, “if we accept the one as _bona fide_, then we must believe this one, too. This turtle is nearly two thousand years old.”

“O-oo!” gasped Tess.

“‘Julius Cæsar’ is the name of Bill Monnegan, the coal man’s, horse,” declared Dot. “And that horse never could have cut those letters into that turtle. So I guess it is maybe a joke, isn’t it?”

“It must be a joke,” laughed Ruth. Then, quite seriously, she added: “But think! Maybe this island isn’t always deserted. Perhaps other people have been here and will come again.”

“These turtles travel many hundreds of miles, Ruth,” Neale said quietly. “This discovery, I guess, offers no particular hope that we shall have visitors. But, of course, we’ll get that old engine to working before long.”