Even as it was, the two older scouts, divesting themselves of shoes and stockings, rolling up their khaki trousers, had to “get out and shove” ere they could propel the flat-bottomed Pill through the mouth of the creek.
“If that fellow hadn’t warned us just in time, we’d have been in a bad scrape,” said Scout Chase. “We’re not out of the misery yet, Nix! See the old mud-shadow poking its nose up on either side of the main channel!”
“Yes, the water on those shallows looks like the inside of an oyster-shell,—thick and iridescent. ‘Shove’ is the word again, Starrie!” returned his toiling companion, arduously putting that watchword in practice, pushing the little boat containing Harold and the pup-seal (the latter being the only member of the party placidly unmoved by the situation) through the iridescent opaqueness of the ebbing ripples that now barely covered vast silvery stretches of tidal mud.
| “CAN’T YOU SEE THE TIDE IS LEAVING YOU?” |
“Look at that old clam-digger, who has his shack on the white beach, about quarter of a mile from our camp! He’s left his boat behind and is wading out to the clam-flats.” Nixon paused, with his breast to the boat’s stern, in the act of propelling it. “Goody! I’d like to stop and dig clams with him. But we’d never get back to camp! What ho! she sticks again. There! that brings her.”
By dint of alternately propelling and rowing the three scouts, with their prize, finally reached the white beach of the dunes before the tide completely deserted them. They brought a full cargo of excitement into camp in their tale of the stranger who had warned them; who, with worthless vagrancy stamped all over him, they felt must be the vaurien, Dave Baldwin; and in their engaging prize, the flippered pup-seal.
The latter quite eclipsed the interest felt in the former. Never was there a more docile, fatter, or more amiable puppy. He enjoyed being fondled in a scout’s arms, under difficulties, as, for a pup, he was quite a heavy-weight and slippery too, on account of the amount of blubber secreted under his creamy skin. His oily brown eyes were softly trustful.
But the tug-of-war came with feeding-time. Vainly did the boy scouts offer him of their best, vainly did Marcoo and Colin tramp a mile over the dunes to bring back a quart of new milk for him from the nearest farm, and try to pour it gently down his infant throat!
He set up a dove-like moaning that was plainly a call for his mother as he lay sprawled out on the white sands. And, at nightfall, by order of the scoutmaster, Scouts Warren and Chase rowed out into the channel and returned him to the water in which he was quite at home.