But Tess was a very persistent person when once she had made up her mind to a thing. She walked along the sh.o.r.e for a long way, staring up into the tops of the palms. The trunks were rough enough, but they offered no means of climbing, even had Tess dared the attempt. There were no branches.

"I never did see such silly trees," she told herself. "I like the trees at home in Milton lots better. Even in winter there are branches sticking out so that you can climb into them if you need to. If-if a mad dog comes along, or anything like that. I wish we were back in Milton!"

Dot heard none of this, for she had settled herself down comfortably under a bush and proceeded to rearrange the Alice-doll's clothes. That young person was certainly sadly in need of a fresh outfit, as Dot had herself stated some hours before. But who could keep one's clothing fresh and tidy when cast away on an uninhabited island?

"It is too bad Sammy isn't here-too bad for him," Dot called to the anxious Tess, after a minute or two. "He'd so love to be wrecked, and in danger of drowning, and being eaten up by turkles, and all. He would be so excited."

"He'd be a nuisance," commented Tess, puzzling her brain over the matter of the signal of distress and nothing much else.

"Come on, Dot," she finally said. "Let's go up to the other end of the island-the end nearest Palm Island where Ruthie and the others are.

Maybe we'll find a tree there."

"There are plenty of trees here. I don't see why you can't keep still, Tess Kenway. The sun's getting hot."

"Then we want to go right away before it gets any hotter," and as Tess started off at once, Dot was forced to get up and follow. She did not wish to be left alone with the Alice-doll, although they had seen nothing on the island as yet to affright them.

There was no hill, or even a small mound, on this little island. Just the level crust of earth over the coral rocks crowded with low vegetation out of which the palms shot in some instances to a considerable height. But near the western end of the island some of these trees had been laid low-possibly in the hurricane which had driven the _Isobel_ and her crew to Palm Island. The condition of the tangled palms was as though they had writhed in agony and been uprooted at last by giant hands.

One tall tree-and Tess spied it long before she got to it-lay for fully forty feet almost along the ground at the edge of the jungle. But its top had been caught by a group of other palms. The trunk of the uprooted tree afforded a slanting walk right into the tops of the other palms!

"I can climb that!" declared Tess, quickly, and began to unfasten her skirt.

The palm trunk was rough and husky. Climbing it on hands and knees was a hard task, but not particularly dangerous. As she kept her eyes fixed ahead of her, Tess did not note particularly the height to which she climbed.

Once in the tops of the several palms she was easily able to fasten her plaid skirt out upon a frond which had a free sweep toward the water.

This signal of distress was what the party on Palm Island had seen just before the raft set sail on its voyage of rescue.

Because Tess had climbed along the tree trunk and hung out her banner, she felt more brave. And even Dot looked at her sister in wide-eyed admiration.

"I guess Ruthie would have scolded you, Tess," she said. "But you can climb almost as good as Sammy."

"Oh, Sammy!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Tess.

Having got into the wood, they went back afterward through the middle of the island. And in this way the two little girls came upon what to them seemed a very strange place indeed. The lianas and other vines made the walking difficult and Tess had just said they would have to go back to the sh.o.r.e when suddenly the two little girls stepped right out into an opening where there was a still blue lake as quiet and safe looking as a millpond.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Climbing it on hands and knees was a hard task but not particularly dangerous.]

There was only a narrow ribbon of sh.o.r.e bordering this circular pond of water. The jungle grew almost to the edge of the water and the palms shaded it completely, for it was not many yards across.

As the sun's rays were now hot, the look of this pool was delightful.

Dot got down on her hands and knees to drink. But in a moment she sat back again, sputtering and crying out:

"Oh! Isn't that nasty mean, Tess Kenway? It's salt like all the rest of the water down here."

"Why, there is no place where the sea runs in that I can see," Tess declared. She tasted the water gingerly, then shook her head. "I guess you are right, Dot. I don't understand it. But it is pretty in here, and cool."

The two little girls remained at this pool all day. Fruit was plentiful, fringing the open water. They saw fish jump, or swimming in the clear depths. Far below, among the coral formations, the delicate seaweeds waved to and fro. There was a submarine opening or openings into the sea, but Tess and Dot scarcely understood the nature or origin of this salt water basin in the center of the little island.

Occasionally Dot sighed and made dismal complaint that she wished Ruthie and the others would come for them. But the fact remained that being cast away on one island was just about the same as being cast away on another.

They were so far from the careened motor-boat that the sisters decided to remain where they were over night. Occasionally during the afternoon the two made a pilgrimage to the sh.o.r.e where they could see the _Isobel_; but they saw nothing else, and certainly did not catch sight of the raft with Mr. Howbridge and Luke and Neale upon it.

The fast falling evening caught the little girls by the edge of the pool in the middle of the island.

"I don't care," said Tess, when Dot began to sniffle a bit. "I don't care if we do have to stay here. Here the sand is warm and there are none of those big turtles to crawl out and maybe bite us."

"Oh! I wish you wouldn't," gasped Dot. "I had forgotten about those old turkles."

The two sisters fell asleep as calmly as though they were in their own beds at the old Corner House. This was by no means the first night they had been lost and had slept in the open air. And nothing had ever really harmed them; though it is true that they were frightened at times.

This occasion was no exception. They could not have been sleeping two hours when first Tess and then Dot was aroused. It was not the splashing of the silvery water in the pool that aroused them, but some sound-a groan or sigh that actually seemed to have been uttered right in their ears!

Up sat the two little girls, wide awake and with wide-open eyes. They faced the pool. Out of this, rising slowly and ghostily, was a glistening gray body like a drowned giant that might have suddenly come up to breathe.

And the sigh he uttered! It made the flesh of Tess and Dot Kenway quiver to hear that sound and the blood seemed to freeze in their veins.

"O-o-o-o-o-o!" moaned the mysterious ghost, while the water poured in a gentle shower from his shoulders.

CHAPTER XXIII

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 anch.o.r.ed.

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."