“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?”