Even Sally became more optimistic when her thirst was quenched. Betsy and Babs were running a race down the last gentle slope of the hill, and so they were quite a distance ahead, when the girls following saw them stop suddenly, then Betsy dropped to her knees and began examining the ground.
Leaping up, she beckoned frantically for the others to make haste. It was plain that the two girls were much excited.
Eager to know the cause of it, the other four started on a run.
“What is it?” Virg called as soon as they were near enough. “What have you found?”
For answer Betsy pointed at the black wet soil down which water from the spring trickled. The prints of small bare feet were plainly to be seen. After examining them for a moment, Virginia exclaimed glowingly, “It is surely the print of a child’s foot, which means that we were right in believing that a fisherman lives on this island. Perhaps even now, we are near his cabin.”
The oldest girl sincerely hoped that the dwellers on the island might be fisher folk, but well she knew that sometimes smugglers and even outlaws hid among seldom frequented islands off the coast.
Betsy, delighted to have something to detect, was following the way the footprints led and soon they beheld before them a sheltering wall of rocks, and nestled close to it, as though for protection, the oddest kind of a dwelling. It had been crudely fashioned with small logs laid one on another, fastened to upright trees at the four corners by stout reeds that had been procured from some swamp. The roof was thatched with interwoven branches and a door, similarly constructed, was closed and fastened. There were no windows to the house and the owner was evidently away.
“Maybe it was made by savages,” Sally ventured. “There’s a picture something like it in the big geography on the page that tells about the South Sea Islands.”
“And there is a crude outdoor open,” Babs pointed, “and right by it are scooped out stones and big shells as though they were cooking utensils.”
Virginia gazed about for a thoughtful moment, then she said, “I’m almost inclined to think that whoever lives here has been shipwrecked like ourselves, and so, of course, he would have to resort to primitive methods of building and cooking.”