“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.