Recalling a day at Katleean, when she had stood by a creek watching the salmon struggle up through the shallow water, while screeching gulls swooped exultantly down on the helpless creatures and gouged the eyes out of the living fish, Jean shuddered and quickened her steps.
They approached the tent cache at the West Camp. It appeared intact. The wind, being from the southwest had struck with full force on the opposite end of the Island. Jean untied the flap of the tent and went inside. The provisions were piled up nearly to the ridgepole at the back. Lollie, poking about, came upon a piece of rope, which, boylike, he took outside and wound about his waist. Jean heard him stumbling over the guy-ropes at the side. Then from the back came his call:
"Jean! Come here!"
The girl ran out and joined him. He was pointing to the back of the tent. The pegs which had fastened it to the earth were uprooted. The canvas swung free. But what filled her with momentary conjecture was that which lay at her feet. A sack of flour evidently had been dragged out from under the wall of the tent and ripped open, for the sand was whitened with the doughy mixture resulting from the rain.
At this moment it did not occur to the girl to be frightened. There were no tracks in the sand other than hers and Loll's. Evidently, she thought, in the haste to load the boat before the storm, the men had dropped the sack and it had burst open.
"But how careless of them, Loll, not to peg the tent down again," she said. Loll, however, was already headed for the first camp-site made when landing on the northeast side of the Island. Her call brought his eager answer:
"Aw, come on, Jean, I want to see how drowned we'd be if we'd stayed there during the storm."
Smiling to herself at the boy's love of dwelling on their narrow escapes from death, real and imaginary, the girl turned and picking up a stone drove in a few of the tent-pegs before she followed him.
On each side of the trail great patches of rice-grass had been flattened from the force of the wind and rain, and the air was filled with the sweet smell of vegetation drying in the sun. As she approached the other side, the blue sky curved down to meet the ocean on a far straight line. The yellow-green of the sea was set off by astonishing areas of clearest cobalt blue, and the flying spray from combers breaking for miles out on the North Shoals, caught the sunlight in a glory of rainbow mist.
"See, I told you, Jean," Loll nodded sagely and pointed ahead as she overtook him.