The leader had the brass box locked tightly in his arms.
“Beat it, everybody!” he panted, starting down the hill on the gallop, Red and Peg hard after him.
Of no desire to make the journey from the island into Tutter in a borrowed nightshirt, I said to myself that here was my chance to get a pair of pants. Darting to one of the pup tents I grabbed the first pair of pants that came to my hands. I could hear the Strickers near by. So I didn’t try to run back to the path, but jumped into the nearest clump of hazel brush. It was shadowy here. I couldn’t see where I was putting my feet.
Snap!
I gave a terrified shriek as the awful thing, whatever it was, set its teeth into the toe of my left shoe. The island contained some monstrous snakes. Five—six feet long. Black fellows with hungry eyes. And on the moment all I could think of was that I had stepped into a snake’s [[206]]nest. I expected to have a wriggling body coil itself around my captured leg. Oh!… I can’t begin to describe my terror and horror.
But it wasn’t a snake. Instead, it was a huge snapping turtle—the same turtle, we were told later, that Peg and Red had captured in their trip around the island. The Strickers had picked up the big turtle in landing on the island and had tied it, by one hind foot, to a tree near their camp.
Say, at sight of that turtle I felt like a dumb-bell right. With seventeen billion places on the island to put my foot down, I had picked out one of the very few places where danger lurked. I was good, all right!
I gave my foot a sharp wrench. But the old snapper had a death grip on the toe of my shoe. I could imagine from his dogged conduct that the Strickers had been tantalizing him with sticks, getting him in exactly the right frame of mind to want to chew the piston out of a locomotive. What a piece of good luck, he probably was purring to himself, that a nice juicy foot had finally come within snapping distance of his watering jaws. Gr-r-r-r! Just to show me how tickled he was in the turn of his luck he tightened down with his teeth. I gave another shriek. My toes were being crushed. [[207]]
The Strickers had by this time arrived in a fighting mood at the top of the hill. I could hear them raving about the flattened tent. And realizing what would happen to me if they got their hands on me, I whipped out my pocketknife, slashing the rope that held the turtle to the tree. Then the two of us, the snapper and me, rolled over and over down the hill.
“It’s Jerry Todd!” I heard Bid Stricker screech. “After him, fellows,” was the leader’s furious command. [[208]]