“What good would that do?” demanded Jim. “We don’t know what direction the camp is.”
“No, but we could be sure we were not moving in a circle,” explained Tom sagely. “But come along, we can find that Molly Moke rookery and then go up the hill and find the cave where the sheathbills are and go straight down from there.”
Striving to keep a straight course by listening to the breaking seas at their backs, the boys picked their way over the ridge, and descending the further side, were overjoyed to find themselves among the nesting Molly Mokes.
“We’re all right now!” said Tom confidently. “If we walk straight across and up the hill to the cave we can’t go wrong. Why, I don’t believe we went over half a mile from camp anyway.”
Shut in by the dense fog, the boys could hear the disturbed cries of the thousands of birds about them, but the birds themselves were only visible when within a few feet and even then they had a strange, ghostly appearance. Several times the boys actually bumped into them, and they were constantly compelled to turn to right or left to avoid stepping on the birds. But at last, they reached the scattered, outlying nests and found the ground rising before them.
“Funny, this hill doesn’t seem half as long as it did before,” commented Jim as they gained the summit. “Say, listen! What’s that?”
For a moment the two paused, straining their ears to catch a faint sound that issued from the fog ahead. And then, as the truth dawned upon them, they gazed at each other in dismay. The noise was the breaking waves. They were back at the spot from which they had started. They had walked in a circle and were lost! Presently, however, as they recovered from the disappointment and shock of their discovery, their confidence returned.
“We’ll have to try again,” declared Tom. “We must have got turned around among those Molly Mokes. I’ve a scheme, Jimmy. When we get there this time, we’ll separate a little and one of us will walk ahead a few yards and then stop, and then the other can walk straight to him and then stop and the other can go on ahead as far as he can be seen and stop and in that way we might be able to go pretty straight. Anyway, we won’t go in a circle.”
“That may help,” admitted Jim, “but we’ll have to kick the birds out of the way to do it.”
“Bother the birds!” ejaculated Tom. “We’ve got to get to camp.”