They had gone only a few steps when Bee stopped short and pointed out to sea.
“The Dragon might have been anchored right over there, Patsy,” she asserted. “This would have been a splendid place for the men in the row-boat to land.”
“Maybe they did land here, and struck off into the jungle, right there, where the inlet begins,” surmised Patsy. “Let’s follow the shore of the inlet. It’s almost as wide as this bit of beach and doesn’t look snaky. As long as we don’t get into the jungly part of the jungle we’re safe enough.”
“I think it will be all right for us to go up it a few rods if we stick to the shore,” decided Bee. “It looks so pretty up there under those trees that hang over the water. Truly, Dolores, we’re not thinking about the treasure now. It certainly wasn’t buried along the shore of the inlet. Why, the journal never mentioned an inlet. You go ahead and we’ll follow. You know the ground.”
Reassured by Bee’s words, Dolores first hunted about for a good-sized snake stick, then reluctantly took the lead. The trio soon reached the mouth of the inlet and continued up one side of it for a short distance. The farther they went the narrower grew the sandy shore, lying even with the jungle itself. Over the inlet hung a kind of white haze, appearing to rise from the water.
“We’re in the jungle and yet not in it,” cheerfully commented Patsy. “How misty that water looks.”
She had hardly spoken when Bee uttered a sharp exclamatory “Oh!”
Walking ahead, Dolores had come upon a noisy puff adder curled up on the shore. While it puffed its resentment at being disturbed, she deftly caught it up on the end of the stick and tossed it, hissing, into the water.
“It is not harmful,” she explained, “yet I have the sorrow to see it, because it is the snake, and all snakes are the sign of evil. Now we should perhaps turn back. You have seen——”
Her low, musical voice suddenly trailed off into a horrified gasp. Simultaneously three pairs of eyes had glimpsed a terrifying something rising up through the mist from the inlet’s quiet waters. As it continued to rise they caught a fleeting impression of a grotesque, flat, wrinkled head, composed chiefly of a heavy upper lip from which depended a long trail of green. In its flipper-like arms the ugly monster held a grayish object, clasped close to its vast, shapeless body.