Half a minute more and the dory lay with her head well up on the sloping sand. The boys all leaped ashore except Larry, who busied himself housing the mast and sails and making things snug. The rest scrambled up the bluff, which was an earth bank about twenty feet high and protected at its base by a closely welded oyster bank.
XXVI
AN UNEXPECTED INTERRUPTION
There was nobody near the half burned-out camp-fire, but there were evidences in plenty of the fact that somebody had cooked and eaten there that day. There were no cooking utensils lying about, but there was a structure of green sticks upon which somebody had evidently been roasting meat; there were freshly opened oyster shells scattered around—“the beginnings of a kitchen midden,” Dick observed—and many other small indications of recent human presence. Especially, Cal noticed, that some smouldering brands of the fire had been carefully buried in ashes—manifestly to serve as the kindlers of a fresh fire when one should be needed. Finally, Tom discovered a hunting knife with its point stuck into the bark of a tree, as if its owner had planned to secure it in that way until it should be needed again, just as a house-wife hangs up her gridiron when done with it for the time being.
As the three were discovering these things and interpreting their meaning, Larry joined them and suggested a search of the woods and thickets round about.
“Why not try nature’s own method first?” Tom asked.
“How’s that?”