“Try Crow’s Nest first,” suggested Dell. “That’s a little place and we can scout over it in no time.”
“Think I better—blow?” Gar asked.
“No,” said Nancy. “Can’t tell what Orilla might do if she had time to do it.”
“Right-o!”
With a soft swish through the water the boat glided into shore, with the engine turned off.
Silently the three landed. Gar found a stout young tree to throw his boat rope around and in accord, without the need of questions, each of them immediately faced the little wilderness in a different direction.
“We’ll come together by the big pine—see, right on top of the hill,” Dell suggested, pointing out the big sentinel pine that stood guard over Crow’s Nest.
“Better take a good, strong club,” Gar advised Nancy. “Wait, I see one,” and he made his way through brambles and briars to procure the end of a young birch that had evidently been broken in a storm.
Nancy thanked him, and with the staff began to beat her path through the bushes. They did not really expect to find the girls actually hidden in the underbrush, but Orilla’s habits were said to be so unusual that the scouts were prepared to find her busy at almost any camping detail on the island, if indeed it was this island upon which she had landed.
“Do you know that she carries a hatchet in her car?” Nancy asked, when Dell had come near enough for conversation, “I can’t see what she would want with such tools as that.”