“That’s all right,” said Agnes, briskly recovering from her momentary alarm. “But I never care for fish for breakfast. What are you going to cook over that fire, Neale O’Neil?”
“Give your order, lady. The chef will try to fill it,” declared Neale, quite unshaken by the prospect.
“Two eggs. I always have two eggs for breakfast,” declared Agnes. “You can have all the fruit you want to; but I demand the pair of hen-fruit, too.”
“Very well, my lady,” Neale said, bowing. “Keep your eye on this fire, Luke, while I go egging.”
“Egging!” exclaimed Luke, quite as mystified as the others.
“Sure. I’ve got to go to market for the eggs, haven’t I?” said Neale.
“Can’t we go to the store with you, Neale?” Tess asked eagerly. “Dot and I. We can help you bring home the things.”
“You certainly can. Come on,” said Neale cheerfully, and started off as confidently as though he expected to find a butter and egg store around the first corner. Ruth made no objection to the little girls going, for she was assured by their guardian that there was nothing on these little islands that could possibly hurt them. The three were soon out of sight, for the fringe of low palms and shrubs edged the sands in both directions, and probably continued right around the circumference of the island.
“This is certainly a lonely island,” Ruth said reflectively. “Don’t you suppose it has even a name?”
“Let’s give it one,” announced Agnes, when Luke had shaken a negative head to Ruth’s question. “Why not? We’ll take possession of it in the name of the U. S. A. Spain, or Holland, or France, or England must have overlooked it, or they would have named it.”
“And tacked up a shingle here with the name on it—and a traffic arrow?” chuckled Luke. “‘This is a one-way street’!”
“Smarty!” exclaimed Agnes, making him a little face. “Can’t we name it, Guardy Howbridge?”
“With my full permission,” rejoined the lawyer.
“I wouldn’t know what to call it,” said Ruth reflectively. “That big mound in the middle—with the tree on it. A palm, isn’t it?”
“We saw that palm just as soon as we saw anything when the light broke this morning,” said Luke.
“It is a landmark,” Mr. Howbridge added.
“That is just the thing!” exclaimed Agnes briskly. “The big palm is the most prominent thing about here. Call it Palm Island.”
“Why not?” cried Ruth.
“I subscribe to that name,” said Luke.
So the refuge of the Corner House girls and their friends came to be called Palm Island. That Dot insisted upon calling it “plam” instead of “palm” made little difference. She was always mispronouncing new words.
Just at present, however, Dot and Tess and Neale O’Neil did not know that the island had been christened. They came back briskly from around the point at about the time Luke got a good fire to burning on the beach. The coffee was on and Mr. Howbridge was boiling cereal which had been aboard the motor-boat.
“Where are my eggs?” demanded Agnes, shouting to the exploring trio just as soon as she caught sight of them.
Neale O’Neil raised a bundle he held in his hand. It was a big bandana handkerchief, knotted together at the corners, and evidently containing something heavy. The little girls were both smiling.
“Eggs for every one,” said Neale cheerfully. “Our hens laid very well this time. Here are eighteen, and that should be enough for seven people, don’t you think?”
“You never found eggs, Neale O’Neil!” cried Agnes.
“Yes, he did! Yes, he did!” cried Dot, jumping up and down with delight.
“And out of the funniest nest,” said Tess, quite as excited.
Agnes and Ruth looked into the handkerchief with some disbelief. They saw a dozen and a half rather dirty looking eggs; at least, they were of a brownish-gray color. The shells looked leathery and not like the shells of hens’ eggs.
“Goodness!” murmured Ruth.
“You call those eggs?” demanded Agnes doubtfully.
“And all out of one nest,” cried Tess delightedly.
“Fancy!” said Ruth, much puzzled.
“I hope you know what you are doing, Neale O’Neil,” said Agnes. “Don’t poison us with some strange fruit.”
“So they look like fruit to you, do they?” snorted Neale.
“I’ll take a chance,” said Luke, grinning, “if there is a yolk and a white to them.”
“Put on the fry-pan with some oil in it. Get me the pepper and salt. The chef proposes to turn out some fried eggs to beat the band! How do you like ’em—sunny-side up, or turned over? State your preference, ladies and gentlemen.”
He used his knife to cut the “shells” of the eggs; but the yolk of each was of a deep color and it was quite evident that, no matter what kind of eggs they were, they were fresh.
“Ought to be,” said Neale with confidence. “If they were not laid last night during the storm, they certainly were the night before.”
“I do not understand it,” said Agnes, as the first relay of eggs began to sputter in the pan. “Are there really poultry on this desert island? What kind of hen lays such eggs?”
“A four-legged one,” declared Neil promptly.
“Oh!”
Luke was chuckling again, for he had already guessed the nature of the eggs. “And a hen with no feathers, Neale?” he suggested.
“You’ve said it,” rejoined the younger fellow.
“Oh! Oh!” cried Ruth, suddenly laughing. “And it has a shell.”
“Mercy! Four-legged—and featherless—and a shell,” murmured the puzzled Agnes. “There is one thing sure, we have no poultry to answer to that description at the old Corner House.”
“Ah, but we are a long way from the old Corner House,” said Mr. Howbridge, likewise smiling. “You must expect different fauna—as well as different flora—in this part of the world.”
“And of course, we are bound to find many wonderful things on Palm Island,” Ruth declared soberly.
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.
“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!
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.”
Imagine becoming bored on a desert island in the tropics! But that is exactly what happened in the case of Dot Kenway. Nor was Tess in much finer fettle on the fourth morning of their sojourn on Palm Island.
“I wish we had Tom Jonah here. Or even Billy Bumps,” said Tess to her smaller sister. “There isn’t really much to play with on this place but turtles. And they only lie on their backs and wave their paws at you.”
“It is too bad we didn’t bring that rabbit along that Sammy Pinkney gave us for Christmas,” said Dot, quite as ruefully.
“That old Belgian hare!”
“We-ell, the Belgians are all right, I guess. They live over there in Europe.”
“I guess that rabbit never came from Bel-Belgia, or whatever that place is called,” said Tess.
“And we don’t even know his name,” went on Dot. “We came away so soon after Christmas, and it snowed in between, that I didn’t see that rabbit at all. But Uncle Rufus said it had a good appetite.”
“I’m hungry myself,” announced Tess, rather despondently. “If I tell Ruth she’ll only give me some funny fruit and tell me to eat it and be thankful.”
“M-mm. I know,” rejoined Dot, appreciating this. “But how can you be thankful for something you don’t want? Now, if I had a piece of bread and butter——”
“Oh! And with honey on it!”
“No. Apricot jam. I like that better.”
“Of all the stingy children!” exclaimed Tess, in a strangely quarrelsome mood for her. “When I want honey!”
“Can’t you have honey if you want to? And me have apricot jam? It’s only in our minds, anyway,” mourned Dot, hugging up the Alice-doll. “Say, Tess, let’s do something.”
“What is there to do in this place?” repeated her sister despondently.
“Mr. Howbridge and Luke and Neale have gone hunting for springs again. Ruth told them she had just got to have fresh water. I don’t know what for,” Dot remarked. “They have almost got the engine fixed. I heard Neale say so. Let us go see it.”
This suggestion for action was better than no action at all. Tess agreed, and, unseen by the older girls, the two little ones made their way down to the rocky cove where the Isobel lay. She was not even at anchor now, for the anchor had been raised and the motor-boat drawn very close in to the rocks, as it was high tide. The log still lay like a gangplank from the rock to the forward part of the Isobel.
The boys and Mr. Howbridge had gone away and left the motor-boat in rather a precarious situation, but quite without realizing it. The tide was rising and that served to lift the log and make it rather unsafe for Tess and Dot to pass over; and when the little girls had done so, splash! The log fell into the water between the boat and the shore.
“O-oo! Now see what we’ve done,” gasped Dot.
“Never mind. Neale will find another. And we can stay here till he comes back,” Tess declared.
She did not notice, however, that the accident had brought a sudden strain upon the single line that bound the boat to the shore. This mooring was not very skillfully made, for neither Neale nor Luke were practical sailors, and so were not professional rope-knotters.
At any rate, with the falling of the log the hull of the Isobel strained at the small hawser, and that rope loosened, almost imperceptibly at first, from the rock around which it had been looped.
Tess and Dot did not see this. They got down into the cockpit, and from that place they could not see the rocks without standing up, nor could they be seen themselves from the shore.
The motor-boat rose and fell rather pleasantly upon the surface of the inlet. The tide had now risen to its highest point, and as it turned and began to recede, naturally everything afloat in the little cove began to drift out to sea. The log that had served as a gangplank between the Isobel and the shore went first, but soon the motor-boat likewise got into the tide and blundered out through the mouth of the narrow estuary.
Strange as it may seem, the two smallest Corner House girls did not discover what had happened until the bobbing motor-boat was quite a long way from the island. It was then the freshening wind, that made the boat “joggle,” which first annoyed Dot Kenway.
“I wish this boat would stay still, Tess,” she complained. “Let’s go back to the land. I feel all joggled up inside me.”
Tess jumped up. “Why-ee!” she gasped. “Where—where is Palm Island?”
“Where is what?” her sister demanded, likewise scrambling to her feet.
They were both facing seaward. There were islands in that direction, but smaller ones, and, it seemed to Tess and Dot, a vast distance away! Tess whirled around. Palm Island was behind them. The motor-boat was blundering away from their refuge and their sisters and their friends!
If Dot and Tess had been looking for adventure, they certainly had found it this time.
“Is that Plam Island?” Dot demanded.
“Of course it is.”
“But—but what’s it doing ‘way over there?” quavered Dot. “I thought we were tied to it.”
“We came untied I guess,” said Tess, despondently, seeing the rope dragging over the boat’s rail. “Oh, dear me!”
“I told you I didn’t like this place, Tess Kenway!” stormed Dot. “And now see what’s happened to us. Ruthie will be awful mad.”
But Tess knew that Ruth would experience a different emotion from anger. As long as the boat remained on even keel Tess did not see how much harm could come to them. But suppose they bumped into something?
“Let’s shout!” she urged, climbing upon one of the seats. “Maybe they will hear us.”
But the wind was blowing from the direction of Palm Island, and that and the tide carried the Isobel away from their friends, and carried the sound of their shrill voices away, too.
It was an hour later before anybody on Palm Island imagined that anything out of the way had befallen Tess and Dot Kenway.
There was good reason for the fact that Tess and Dot were not soon missed. The older sisters had left the little ones playing near the tent when they strolled away themselves to see if any success was attending the efforts of the boys and Mr. Howbridge in their search for water.
The heat of the day was over. The breeze had sprung up and laved their faces delightfully as the girls strolled toward the hill on which the big palm tree grew.
The two older sisters found that the boys and their guardian had gone around the foot of the hill which occupied the middle of Palm Island, but they started to mount the slope of the smooth eminence.
“I wish we could see some boat and attract its attention,” sighed Ruth, as they went on. “Then it wouldn’t matter about the water supply or about repairing the engine of the Isobel.”
“I guess we have been castaways long enough,” agreed Agnes. “It would be awful if we had to stay here much longer. Think of our nice dresses there at the hotel all going to waste.”
Ruth smiled indulgently. “We can wear them when we go back North.”
“Oh, they’ll be almost old by that time,” declared the younger girl sadly. “And I did so want to wear ’em where Nalbro Hastings and those other girls could see that we weren’t frumps, even if we did come from Milton.”
“I never!” exclaimed Ruth, laughing. “You are the strangest girl, Aggie.”
“Ought not to be strange to you, Ruthie. You’ve known me all my life,” remarked the flyaway sister, smiling. “And I did want to sport my new frocks!”
“So you shall,” said Ruth, comfortingly. “I don’t think we shall have to remain on Palm Island much longer. Luke tells me he is sure that the engine will be all right soon. He knows a good deal about such things.”
“Oh, Ruth!” exclaimed Agnes suddenly, “there’s a boat coming to rescue us now!”
They were about half way up the slope of the hill. Agnes had turned to look back, and right over the lower trees and the rocky end of the island a craft of some kind was visible. Ruth, quite as excited as her sister, turned sharply to look in the direction Agnes pointed.
“From that way?” she murmured. “St. Sergius isn’t over there, Aggie.”
“I don’t care. You can see the boat, can’t you?” cried Agnes eagerly. “Hurrah! I want to tell Neale. I saw the boat first.”
“Wait!” commanded Ruth, seizing the excited girl’s arm. “That boat is not coming this way, I am afraid.”
“It’s never got past the island without our seeing it!” wailed Agnes. “Never!”
“I—don’t—know——”
“I wish we had put up a flag—a signal of some kind,” Agnes continued to complain. “Oh, Ruthie! If they have gone right by without seeing us! I would have sacrificed my sports skirt for a flag and worn—worn a gunny sack, if necessary! This is too mean.”
“Wait, Aggie!” exclaimed Ruth, still staring at the boat Agnes had first spied. “There—there is something the matter with that boat. What propels it?”
“It is a motor-boat like ours, of course,” rejoined Agnes quickly.
“It is not moving fast enough for that. And there is no sail. And I cannot see anything moving on that boat.”
“For goodness’ sake, Ruthie! Is it a boat sailing all by itself?” Agnes demanded.
“Exactly. That is what it is. The boat has broken away——”
“Well, now!” gasped Agnes. “Isn’t that strange? And it’s a motor-boat like the Isobel.”
“Oh, Aggie!” cried Ruth, turning to her with a frightened face now. “Aggie! It is our boat! It’s broken away, somehow. We are now really cast away on this island. What will become of us?”
Agnes Kenway felt immense dismay at the possibility of the truth of her sister’s statement. But Ruth was so utterly despairing that the younger girl felt she must comfort her.
“If it’s the Isobel, we’re lucky not to be in her,” she said. “I guess we would have to wait for some other boat to come after us, anyway; so we are no worse off than we were before.”
“How can you say that?” Ruth demanded. “Luke was sure he had almost got at the cause of the trouble with the mechanism.”
“Well, let’s not cry about it,” begged Agnes. “Oh, don’t, Ruth! If Tess and Dot see you in tears——”
Ruth dried her eyes suddenly. “I wonder where the children are?” she murmured. “I wonder if they have seen the boat drifting away?”
“And I don’t believe Neale O’Neil knows about it. I am going to run and tell him,” said Agnes, who always made Neale a partner in everything that happened to her.
She darted off excitedly. Ruth started back toward their camp. As she pushed through the shrubs, hastening her steps, she wondered where Tess and Dot were. By and by she began to call them by name; but she received no reply save the raucous cries of the water-fowl and the chattering of parakeets.
Ruth Kenway began to be alarmed in earnest.
Agnes Kenway was as light-footed as a deer. She ran as hard as she could around the slope of the hill on which the big palm grew, and thence down into the green wood. She shouted as she ran and soon heard Neale O’Neil reply.
“What’s broken loose, Aggie?” demanded the boy, as soon as she came into view of the waterhunting party.
“That’s exactly what has happened, Neale,” she returned, in accents which assured both Neale and the others that she was quite in earnest. “Something has broken away! The Isobel!”
Mr. Howbridge came running with Luke. The lawyer’s face was white, for he had heard the girl’s statement.
“You don’t mean that the boat is gone?” he cried.
“So Ruthie says. She is sure,” choked Agnes. “We saw it from up there on the hill.”
Luke and Neale at once dashed away, climbing the hillside with great leaps. But Agnes remained with her guardian.
“We had just found a spring. A good one, too,” murmured the troubled gentleman. “Well, perhaps that is a good thing. If the boat has really drifted away.”
“Oh! It has! It has!” cried the girl. “Everything bad is happening to us. I wish we were at home at the Corner House again.”
“Tut, tut! That is no way to talk,” said Mr. Howbridge, and took her arm as they started in an easterly direction again.
They had not gone far when the two young fellows returned. Both of them looked grave, and Luke said quickly:
“You can’t fool Ruthie. She is always right. That is the Isobel out there and she’s all of two miles away already.”
“She’ll run right into one of those small islands and be wrecked,” said Neale. “Say, Mr. Howbridge! isn’t this a pretty pickle?”
The party hurried on toward their camp, but they could not overtake Ruth. It was not until they passed the tent that Neale said:
“Wonder where Tess and Dot are? Seen ’em lately, Aggie?”
“Why, they must be with Ruth.”
“But there is Ruth now,” cried Luke, increasing his stride. “I don’t see the children with her.”
“Truly, the Isobel has drifted away,” muttered Mr. Howbridge, as they now came in sight of the inlet and the place where the crippled motor-boat had been moored.
The younger people, however, made him no reply. They had suddenly lost interest in the matter of the boat. They were all gazing at Ruth Kenway. Her attitude, as she stood on a high bowlder at the edge of the water, looking off upon the sea, was almost tragic.
Luke bounded ahead at last, reaching the girl much in advance of the others.
“Ruth! Ruth!” he exclaimed. “What is it? Tess—Dot——”
Her hands were clasped tightly against her breast. She did not turn or even look down at him. But her lips moved stiffly and he heard what she said:
“Luke! They are out there! My darling children—my little sisters that I promised mother when she died I would always take care of! Oh, Luke! They are gone—gone!”
He sprang up then beside the girl. It was well he did so, for she wavered and would have fallen had his arm not been around her.
“Ruth! Ruth!” shrieked Agnes, now flying over the sands to the rocky shore. “They are not on the boat? Oh, they can’t be!”
Mr. Howbridge was aroused to the seriousness of the happening. The disappearance of Tess and Dot was a tragedy that dwarfed altogether the loss of the motor-boat.
“I saw them! I saw them!” panted Ruth, lying in Luke’s arms for the moment. “They waved something on a stick. I think it was Tess’ skirt. But the boat is too far away now for you to see it.”
“And not a thing to follow them in,” muttered Neale.
Agnes put a quick palm over his mouth. Thoughtless as the flyaway sister usually was, she realized at this moment the feelings that racked her sister. For Ruth had been responsible for the safety of the little ones, and Agnes knew that nothing could be said to make the older girl forget that fact.
The sun was fast declining. They all knew that the twilight would be short. Indeed, nightfall in the tropics is almost sudden enough to scare one. The last ray of the sun disappears and in an instant it would seem it is velvety dark and the stars pop out!
It did not seem possible that they could do anything to help or to follow Tess and Dot; in any case, not at night. The boat was so far away that they could merely distinguish it as a black-red blotch upon the ocean, where the departing rays of the sun touched the moving object.
The children were too small to be seen, even had they stood upon the decked-over forward part of the Isobel. They were, of course, in the cockpit or in the cabin. All alone upon the ocean! The thought smote the others as well as Ruth Kenway with horror and alarm.
They stood there on the rocks, staring seaward. Not a craft was in sight save the drifting Isobel. It was a lonely stretch of water, with perhaps half a dozen small islands in sight. The lost craft might be drifting toward another strand, or it might pass right out between the islands and go to sea. For Neale’s chart portrayed the fact that beyond this group of the Tortugas, the islands where the pirates used to careen their schooners and scrape their hulls of barnacles, was the tropical Atlantic Ocean.
It was a hopeless group indeed on Palm Island. Perhaps more hopeless and unhappy than the two little girls themselves who were the object of so much solicitude. It was true that Dot had cried a little, but she had the Alice-doll with her, and was soon comforted. Tess, from her very nature, was likely to consider the situation more interesting than threatening.
Here was a chance for Tess to take the lead; and she certainly loved to “boss.” Dot was quite ready to sit down and allow her older sister to arrange matters. That was by far the easier way. Then, if things went wrong, there was always Tess to be blamed.
The older sister assumed responsibility with the joy of an oyster imbibing sea-water. She immediately became possessed of the idea that she really might do something to aid in their difficulty. They were afloat on rather a big ocean, as far as she could see, and without means of propelling the Isobel in any way the current did not go; nevertheless, Tess took the wheel, as she had seen Mr. Howbridge and the boys do, and proceeded to “steer” the motor-boat on her course.
“Why don’t you turn it around and make it run back to Plam Island again?” Dot wanted to know with what might have been considered sarcasm from an older person.
“Now, you know very well that the engine isn’t running,” said Tess, “And so the propellers aren’t making any splatter in the water. So we could not make her go back to the island. The tide will carry us—carry us——”
“Well, where’s it going to carry us?” Dot demanded, a good deal more efficient as a question-asker than a question-answerer.
“Now, Dorothy Kenway!” exclaimed Tess, very self-important, “I wish you would not sit there and ask such things. I am no better acquainted around here than you are.”
“There’s an island,” said Dot, standing up to look ahead.
“Yes, I see there is. Perhaps this boat wants to go there. I am sure I would just as lief be on land as out here in this boat.”
“Suppose—suppose there is somebody on that island?” quavered Dot.
“Wouldn’t be any harm in that.”
“Or something to hurt us? A big, big——”
“Turtle,” finished Tess practically. “That Mr. Methuselah didn’t really hurt you, Dot, if he did start to run off with you. You can look where you are sitting, next time, can’t you?”
“Well, I hope Neale O’Neil or somebody will come after us,” sighed Dot.
Suddenly Tess became very thoughtful. She exclaimed:
“Why, they won’t know we are in this boat at all! They can’t see us over the sides. Here, Dot! You take this steer-a-ma-jig.”
“I don’t believe, Tess Kenway, that does any good,” said Dot. “The boat goes just where it wants to, anyway.”
This very sensible statement rather annoyed Tess. But she was in earnest. She found a boathook and hurried to remove her skirt, which was plaid with much red in it. This she fastened to the rusty hook and set it up in the stern of the Isobel. As a flag of distress it was a good deal better than nothing.
Then Tess went back to the steering wheel. She did not, herself, see that what she did to it made any difference; but one must do something. She looked ahead at the island which the bow of the motor-boat was aimed for. The current that had seized the drifting boat undoubtedly laved the shore of this island, which was not, as Tess could see, half the size of Palm Island. There was a goodly group of palm trees on it, but the white beach, as far as the little girls could see it, was very narrow.
In fact, it was a true coral island, built entirely by the coral insects. Sand had been washed upon the coral reefs by the sea until the soil was raised slightly above the surface of the water. Birds had brought and dropped seeds of tropical plants here. The waves had washed ashore logs and other refuse to decay and aid in forming a crust of friable soil.