“You don’t clam that way,” Polly told her. “You dig for clams. You don’t spear them.”
“I don’t,” Ted said quite seriously. “I take my mandolin and sit down on the sand, and play to them, and they all come out and smile at me.”
“You silly goose,” Polly laughed, but Ted ran on ahead after Sue. She had vanished suddenly over the rocky ledge ahead. They could hear her in the distance singing “Nancy Lee” at the top of her healthy young lungs; then all at once there was a dead silence.
“Maybe they’ve caught her,” whispered Isabel. “Let’s run for the boats.”
“Run, and leave Sue behind?” Polly’s tone was full of reproach. “Not if I know it. Here are seven of us, and we’re all good and hearty. We’ll go and find out the trouble.”
They turned away from the beach and started up the rocks, Nancy and Polly leading. At the top they paused. The entire island lay outspread before them. It was a mass of sand, with gradually rising rock ledges towards its center, and scrub pines and willows everywhere. Right in the center, on the highest rock, rose the Castle, or “Smugglers’ Tower,” as it had been called. It was built over the site of the old fisherman’s hut, and was half overgrown by moss, vines, and clambering shrubs. Inside the ruins, willows and young birches had grown up in defiance of the place. But Sue was nowhere in sight, and they could see all over the island from where they stood.
CHAPTER XII
“GIRL OVERBOARD!”
“Don’t call out to her,” whispered Polly. “Wait here just a minute, while I climb down these rocks. This is the way she went, you can see her tracks.”
“Tracks, on a rocky path,” murmured Ted, helplessly. “Polly, where are they? I don’t see any?”